What are the key origins of coaching?
Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill and W Clement Stone have a lot to answer for. Still in the best-sellers list today, they initiated the personal development movement in the 1950s in dissatisfied post-war America by encouraging individuals to take charge of their own destinies and aspire towards having and being the best. Then during the 1980’s, therapists began to see an increasing number of patients with dissatisfaction rather than clinical issues. Therapists who focused on helping people with ‘dis-ease’ rather than disease became known as coaches and their patients became known as clients. The success of coaching work for helping with these sorts of issues grew, from word of mouth from happy clients, and coaching as a field became distinct.
