Putting research at the heart of practice

I’m looking forward to contributing to the EMCC’s annual Research Conference at the University of Greenwich this week. The conference theme is Putting research at the heart of practice. Keynote speakers, a panel of experts and over 20 session speakers (of which I’m one) will develop the theme.

The keynote will be by Barry Curnow and Professor David Gray, focusing on the impact of changing roles on our identities and development. Their session will present the qualitative results of a large-scale, global study of coaching identity.

I’m really pleased to be contributing to this conference, because for me the theme poses a perennial question. How can practitioners and academics meet and inform each others’ areas of expertise, rather than diverge and lose out from understanding each other? The stakes are high, because the benefits of collaborating and co-creating can genuinely transform the work we do, in both coaching practice and academic study.

I’m taking part in two sessions at the conference.

On day 1 (Weds 14 June at 3.25pm), David Clutterbuck and I will be presenting the full results of our Team Coaching Supervision Survey. We launched the survey in December as a means of initiating research in this very recent field of study. The survey closed in January, and gained a very positive response, with 80 respondents. This is one of the first global studies in this area of work. More details of this session are on the EMCC conference page.

On day 2 (Thurs 15 June, at 10.25am), I’ll be facilitating a workshop entitled: Action Research or Researching Action? This will address the theme of the conference directly. My doctoral research was into coaching supervision, and my practice is now informed and underpinned by the core tenets of action research methodology. The session will explore some of the key principles and elements of action research. See the EMCC conference page for more details of the session.

EMCC Research Conference
University of Greenwich, London
14-15 June 2017

Photo by basti_voe