Change Process in Coaching: Interplay of Nonverbal Synchrony, Working Alliance, Self-Regulation, and Goal Attainment

Abstract

Background: Psychological literature emphasizes that self-regulation is important as goal intentions, goal setting, or implementation intention does not automatically result in effective results in coaching. The question which coaching strategies to apply to strengthening clients' self-regulatory capacities as prerequisites of effective change outcomes remains a black box in coaching.Method: This quantitative study explored clients' self-regulatory mechanisms by addressing how nonverbal synchrony influences clients' cognitive and emotional self-regulation across sessions. One hundred eighty-four coach–client pairs and their evolving change process were observed over 8 months. Video-recorded sessions were assessed with motion energy analysis to automatically capture coach and client nonverbal behavior and quantify nonverbal synchrony at the level of the dyad.Results: Synchrony was differentially associated with clients' post-session questionnaires on result-oriented problem-reflection and self-reflection, affect balance, and working alliance. Network analyses suggested that the association between synchrony and other process variables did not correspond to the previously found positive association between synchrony and positive aspects of alliance or outcome. Instead, this association depended on the level of perceived outcome.Discussion: Coaching success may be predicted by process variables assessed after each session: goal reflection, alliance, and mood all predict successful coaching. The assessment of nonverbal synchrony suggests a state-dependent effect of embodied processes on a coaching outcome that warrants further inspection.

Movement Synchrony Over Time: What Is in the Trajectory of Dyadic Interactions in Workplace Coaching?

“…Therefore, we are interested in building knowledge of MS as a time-series measure as a yet unexplored phenomenon in the coaching process. All the more, as the study by Erdös and Ramseyer ( 2021 ) indicated that MS may have a rich nature and multilayered facets for coaching as an interactional change process, hence, we claim that digging deeper into the serial representation of MS may be useful to yield insights that can be further investigated in coaching research on the basis of hypothesis-testing studies or in applying descriptive approaches to enhance our understanding of coaching as a change process.…”

“…Movement synchrony (MS; Ramseyer and Tschacher, 2011 ) is a yet unexplored concept in coaching. To date, the only study investigating MS as a spontaneous non-verbal interactional variable beyond consciousness in workplace coaching (Erdös and Ramseyer, 2021 ) found MS to have implications for clients' affective and cognitive regulatory capacities. That study also found MS to be influenced by the quality of the coach-client relationship in clients' goal-striving processes.…”

“…Today, there is increasing scholarly interest in exploring coaching as a set of verbal and non-verbal interactional processes in coach-client dyads (e.g., Schermuly and Scholl, 2012 ; Ianiro et al, 2013 , 2015 ; Ianiro and Kauffeld, 2014 ; Erdös and Ramseyer, 2021 ). This interest is grounded in the nature of coaching as an interactional change process that is viewed as a “complex adaptive system” (O'Broin and Palmer, 2010 , p. 28) rather than a linear input-output mechanism.…”

“…Against this background, we know little about the role that the time and number of sessions as characteristic aspects of the trajectory of non-verbal interactions may play in a client's change process in coaching. Most recently, Erdös and Ramseyer ( 2021 ) have investigated the impact of movement synchrony (MS) as the unconscious non-verbal spontaneous responsiveness between a coach and a client on goal striving in workplace coaching. Specifically, the data analysis resulting from motion energy analysis (Ramseyer, 2020b ) in that study produced a mean of the MS data by averaging MS cross-correlations between session segments and within dyads in sessions.…”

“…Thus, this paper explores the relevance of the trajectory of MS in coach-client dyadic interactions based on the publicly available dataset from the study conducted by Erdös and Ramseyer ( 2021 ). It does so by computing average MS per session/dyad for two specific clusters: (a) those 59 dyads that completed exactly 10 sessions, and (b) a set of 173 dyads with a varied number of sessions.…”