Integral Coaching for Leaders’ Holistic Well-Being

What the paper says

Coaching has been recognised as an accomplished method to help clients (coachees) increase their well-being for personal growth and organisational change. Integral coaching, defined from a transpersonal psychological perspective, confronts human nature, including mind, body and spirit. The research aim was to explore the ways in which integral coaching facilitates holistic well-being through a transpersonal psychology paradigm. A hermeneutic phenomenological research approach was applied. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven leaders who had engaged in at least six coaching sessions informed by the integral coaching model selected for this study. The leaders’ narratives were analysed according to the six streams used by the coaching model. After discussing the themes, six working hypotheses were developed for sense-making. The findings indicated that integral coaching could enable a leader’s whole-person engagement to change as a pathway and solution towards holistic well-being in a complex South African context. Although the research was limited to the coaching outcomes of seven leaders, the indication was that coaches could apply integral coaching to initiate a dynamic, multidimensional and holistic process of well-being within the self (intrapersonal), relationships with others (interpersonal) and beyond the self (transpersonal). The recommendation is that integral coaching can be used with leaders and followers in the South African work environment to improve relations with the self and others for the betterment of all.