What coaching and contemporary systems theorists can learn from each other?

Coaching approaches emphasise:

1. Facilitating self learning rather than giving answers direct to coachees' problems
2. Developing self learning capability
3. Examining both the rational and emotional concerns of the coachees that affect self dvelopment as well as work performance of the coachees.

Contemporary systems thinking, notably with soft systems thinking (SSM), share the same interests and focus of practices with coaching practices as mentioned above. Thus, SSM emphasizes a collective participatory learning process, in which the SSM theorist acts as a facilitator mainly, to involve the stakeholders in a problem situation to learn from their perceptions and concerns as related to the problem situation. This is achieved via the rich picture building exercise, and the elaboration "insightful" ideas from the stakeholders themselves into conceptual models. And, in the formulation of the conceptual models, the worldviews (which capture personal values) underlying the insightful ideas (ie root definitions) are exposured for explicit examination. The subsequent debates of various conceptual models constructed are meant to promote collective learning of the stakeholders involved. In short, in SSM, the SSM theorist is a facilitator on learning, notably on collective learning, rather than as an expert providing an optimum solution to the client based on his/her own research efforts.

The main differences between the coaching approach and the contemporary systems approaches, e.g. soft systems approaches and critical systems approaches are that:

1. Systems approaches are more prepared to serve a group of participants, including the whole organization (e.g. in the form of the interactive planning approach of R.L. Ackoff) while coaching tends to focus on serving an individual (in this case, the coach mainly deliver personalized coaching service to an individual)
2. Coaching practices rely more on theories from the disciplines of psycholology, philosophy and education while contemporary systems approaches employ more notions from systems thinking as well as various other disciplines from social sciences.
3. Systems approaches are more holistic in perspective than that of the coaching practices.
4. Contemporary systems approaches can be employed in a broader subject domain of Management consulting, with coaching as a subbranch of Management Consulting.

The coaching literature offers a lot of concrete practical ideas on how to support learning and development at the individual level; and contemorary systems theorists will benefit a lot from learning from the coaching literature to stimulate further development in systems thinking and systems methodologies.