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 be solved’ for national governing bodies (NGBs) with policy makers persisting in their quest to find an effective solution to bring about sustained change. Here, we suggest that coach development should instead consider a strength-based approach to change in an effort to build on current practice. This study, conducted ‘in-situ’ by the Head of Performance, focused on coach development within a NGB field hockey talent development programme. In a shift from the traditional ‘top down’, cut and paste approach to change interventions synonymous with coach development, this study adopted an appreciative inquiry (AI) approach that focuses on strengths and collaboration within groups and has been found to assist in the identification of new ways of working. The results showed that by adopting an AI framework to coach development, the themes of positivity and collaboration leading to generativity were integral to coach development within a NGB talent development programme. Positivity was clearly a highlight in this context as findings indicate that coaches were highly motivated to interrogate new ideas through a positive mindset. Similarly, results show that the collaborative approach to change and personal learning ensured a sustained movement towards the collective vision for the programme. Interestingly, results also show the theme of complexity when adopting an AI approach to coach learning and the need to maintain an element of flexibility that does not follow a ‘clean’ approach to AI that is often reported within the literature. Lastly, the importance of facilitation from the researcher was highlighted within the inquiry and sheds new light into the complexity of coach learning in a collaborative setting. This investigation highlights the potential of strengths-based inquiry in relation to coach development and provides a rich insight into context specific personal development within coaching.