Critical Coaching: Development

Sustained critical inquiry into professional life and practice

Understanding your professional circumstances more deeply

Professional questions are not always resolved through a single decision or a short period of reflection. Leadership responsibilities, professional identity, workplace relationships and organisational expectations can raise questions that develop over time. As circumstances change, new tensions may become visible. Assumptions that initially seemed straightforward may require reconsideration. Possibilities for action may emerge through experience, dialogue and further reflection. Critical Coaching: Development provides a six-month opportunity for sustained critical inquiry into your professional circumstances and practice. Drawing upon Paulo Freire's philosophy and pedagogy, the programme approaches coaching as a collaborative process of questioning, reflection and learning. Rather than concentrating exclusively on personal goals or individual performance, it examines the relationships, institutional structures and social conditions that shape professional experience. The longer engagement allows emerging questions to be revisited, developing understanding to be connected with practice, and the implications of different actions to be considered over time.

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Who is this package for?

Critical Coaching: Development may be appropriate if you are:

Exploring continuing questions about professional identity and direction.
Developing or reconsidering your approach to leadership.
Working within complex organisational responsibilities.
Examining recurring tensions in professional relationships or institutional expectations.
Navigating an extended period of professional or organisational change.
Questioning assumptions that shape your professional practice.
Seeking sustained opportunities to connect reflection, inquiry and action.

It is particularly appropriate when the questions involved are complex, evolving or closely connected with the wider conditions of professional life. You do not need to begin with a fixed developmental plan or a complete understanding of the issues you wish to explore.

What does critical coaching involve?

The engagement begins with an initial inquiry discussion exploring your professional circumstances, the questions you are considering and the expectations and boundaries of the coaching relationship. Subsequent conversations provide opportunities for critical reflection upon experiences, decisions, relationships and emerging situations. Your coach supports inquiry into how these are understood, what assumptions and interests may be involved, and how organisational and institutional conditions influence the possibilities available. As the engagement progresses, earlier questions may be revisited and new lines of inquiry may emerge. Where appropriate, reflection may be connected with experimentation in professional practice. This might involve exploring a different approach to a conversation, examining assumptions with colleagues, reconsidering a decision-making process or investigating the conditions affecting a particular situation. Periodic reviews provide opportunities to consider the development of the inquiry. The programme concludes with a review of learning, continuing questions and possible directions for further reflection and action.

What's included?

A six-month critical coaching engagement.
Twelve individual sessions of 60 minutes, normally held twice monthly.
An initial contracting and inquiry discussion.
Continuing critical exploration of professional questions and circumstances.
Periodic reviews of emerging questions and developing understanding.
Opportunities to connect reflection with experimentation in practice.
A concluding review of learning and possible next steps.

Beyond conventional coaching

Much conventional coaching begins with a goal and seeks to identify the actions an individual must take to achieve it. Critical coaching asks whether the goal itself, and the circumstances in which it has been formed, may require examination. Who defines what counts as professional success? How do organisational expectations influence our choices? What forms of authority and power shape the possibilities available to us? When does meaningful change require collective rather than individual action? These questions do not necessarily produce simple answers. They can, however, provide opportunities to develop a richer understanding of professional experience and examine possibilities that may otherwise remain overlooked. A longer coaching engagement creates space for this inquiry to develop through continuing experience, reflection and practice.

Begin a conversation

If you are interested in sustained critical inquiry into your professional circumstances, leadership practice or organisational responsibilities, we invite you to discuss whether this programme might be appropriate.

Tell us about your goals. We will discuss the right approach with you before agreeing a package and arranging payment.

For a more concentrated engagement around a particular professional question: