Investigating the use of Appreciative Inquiry as a process for coach development within a National Governing Body talent development programme

 Coach development continues to be positioned as a‘problem to besolved’for national governing bodies (NGBs) with policy makerspersisting in their quest tofind an effective solution to bring aboutsustained change. Here, we suggest that coach development shouldinstead consider a strength-based approach to change in an effort tobuild on current practice. This study, conducted‘in-situ’by the Head ofPerformance, focused on coach development within a NGBfield hockeytalent development programme. In a shift from the traditional‘topdown’, cut and paste approach to change interventions synonymouswith coach development, this study adopted an appreciative inquiry(AI) approach that focuses on strengths and collaboration within groupsand has been found to assist in the identification of new ways ofworking. The results showed that by adopting an AI framework tocoach development, the themes ofpositivityandcollaboration leadingto generativitywere integral to coach development within a NGB talentdevelopment programme. Positivity was clearly a highlight in thiscontext asfindings indicate that coaches were highly motivated tointerrogate new ideas through a positive mindset. Similarly, resultsshow that the collaborative approach to change and personal learningensured a sustained movement towards the collective vision for theprogramme. Interestingly, results also show the theme ofcomplexitywhen adopting an AI approach to coach learning and the need tomaintain an element offlexibility that does not follow a‘clean’approach to AI that is often reported within the literature. Lastly, theimportance of facilitation from the researcher was highlighted withinthe inquiry and sheds new light into the complexity of coach learningin a collaborative setting. This investigation highlights the potential ofstrengths-based inquiry in relation to coach development and providesa rich insight into context specific personal development within coaching.