The role of semi-responsive answers for relationship building in coaching

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of semi-responsive answers of clients for relationship building in coaching. Coaching is a process-oriented type of counseling in which a coach and a coachee collaboratively work on solving a particular worklife or daily life related concern of the coachee. The paper aims at identifying and analyzing semi-responsive answers of coachees (second pair part) as reactions to initiating turns of coaches (first pair part). It is hypothesized that semi-responsive answers are of particular relevance for any coaching process as they reveal ambivalences, (inner) conflicts, uncertainties and/or opposition on the client’s side which ought to be noticed and appropriately addressed by the coach. A conversation analysis manual was developed in order to systematically identify and analyze the linguistic characteristics of semi-responsiveness in coachee’s answers. First, theoretical and methodological aspects regarding a conversation analysis manual to study structures of social interaction are discussed. Second, a code-system to identify semi-responsive answers is demonstrated. Finally, based on the transcribed data, semi-responsive answers are analyzed with respect to how they are addressed by the coaches in third position. The data consists of 21 face-to-face coaching sessions (64 hours) in Swiss and Standard German. The analysis demonstrates that semi-responsive answers are both a valuable source of information and a challenge as they require the coach to maintain a balance between facilitating the process and maintaining a good relationship with the client.

Resisting wh-questions in business coaching

“…Their analysis focusses on one coaching session and investigates both the thematic contexts of the client’s resistance as well as the sequential organization of interactional trouble. Winkler (2022) explores ‘semi-responsive answers’ to all types of questions. The study applies a (CA-based) coding scheme for (semi-)responsive answers following criteria pertaining to the topical dimension (e.g., topical shifts and expansions to additional topics, topical narrowings, refusing to engage with the agenda) and formal dimension (e.g., shifts in perspectivation and verb tense as well as use of mitigating strategies) ( Winkler, 2022 , pp.…”

“… Winkler (2022) explores ‘semi-responsive answers’ to all types of questions. The study applies a (CA-based) coding scheme for (semi-)responsive answers following criteria pertaining to the topical dimension (e.g., topical shifts and expansions to additional topics, topical narrowings, refusing to engage with the agenda) and formal dimension (e.g., shifts in perspectivation and verb tense as well as use of mitigating strategies) ( Winkler, 2022 , pp. 159ff).The focus of the analysis lies on degrees of responsiveness in client answers as well as on categorizing coaches’ reactions to these in third positions.…”

“…Previous research has centered on resistance in the context of a particular (thematic-functional) question type and within question-answer sequences in general. Though categories for semi-responsiveness have been introduced by Winkler (2022) and MacMartin has distinguished dis-aligning / dis-affiliative responses to wh-questions, no systematic conversation analytic investigation of resistive answers to wh-questions has so far been carried out for business coaching. In our contribution, we build on previous findings but describe the variety and extent of resisting in recipient turns, thereby paying attention to interactional tendencies on the passive vs. active or ‘moving away’ vs. ‘moving against’ spectrum previously identified in other helping formats.…”

“…In contrast, resisting in coaching as locally emerging, sequentially organized phenomena has so far received little empirical attention. To the best of our knowledge, only two CA-based research papers exist, Sator and Graf (2014) and Winkler (2022) .…”

“Because he was disgusting”: transforming relations through positioning in messenger-supported group psychotherapy

“…Scarvaglieri et al (2022a), for example, dedicate an entire anthology to the shaping of relationships in helping interactions, in which different helping formats are examined from the point of view of the co-construction of relationships, e.g., doctor-patient conversations (Džanko, 2022;Günthner, 2022;Kuna and Scarvaglieri, 2022;Thurnherr, 2022), psychotherapy (Buchholz, 2022;Guxholli et al, 2022;Kabatnik et al, 2022;Muntigl, 2022;Pawelczyk and Faccio, 2022), coaching (Graf and Jautz, 2022;Winkler, 2022), as well as newer helping formats in the social web, such as support through illness-related forums in social media (Kabatnik, 2022). The research focuses there, for example, on the constitution of a sense of community between psychotherapist and patient (Buchholz, 2022), the face-threatening question What about you in psychotherapy (Guxholli et al, 2022) or semi-responsive answers (Winkler, 2022). What these studies have in common is that mostly only dyadic helping formats and the constitution of relationships between professionals and clients are examined.…”