This research project involved a phenomenological exploration of executive coaching as an experiential learning process within the context of the Integrated Experiential Coaching Model. This model proposes that executive coaching is about facilitating integrated experiential learning in individuals in order to facilitate personal growth and development with the aim of improving individual and organizational performance. It is not therapy. It is integrated in that it caters for Schumacher’s Four Fields of Knowledge and Wilber’s Integral Model which caters for personal development through various levels of consciousness, especially in the personal and transpersonal levels. It is experiential in that it uses Kolb’s Experiential Learning model as the injunction and uses Harri-Augstein and Thomas’s concept of Learning Conversations as the primary learning tool.
An adapted version of the Transcendental Phenomenological Methodology of Moustakas was chosen to explore and discover the meaning and essence of the learning experience while being coached within the context of the Integrated Experiential Coaching Model. It was hypothesised that the Integrated Experiential Coaching Model facilitated both the prehension and transformational dimensions of Experiential Learning in individuals. The co-researchers understood and owned some significant behavioural dynamics inside of themselves, as well as between themselves and other significant colleagues. This underlines the possibilities of coaching as a staff development intervention to facilitate self-authorisation by working through one’s own unconscious and dynamic behavioural issues. It was hypothesised that coaching presented from this model empowers individual employees to work towards their own cognitive insight, the experience of emotional meaningfulness and taking of responsibility for their own growth and career development
