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Part of
Discourses of Helping Professions
Edited by Eva-Maria Graf, Marlene Sator and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 252] 2014
► pp. 91–122

“Making one’s path while walking with a clear head”

(Re-)constructing clients’ knowledge in the discourse of coaching: Aligning and dis-aligning forms of clients’ participation

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This chapter looks at (re-)constructing clients’ knowledge in coaching which represents an endemic interactive feature of this helping profession that aims to solve clients’ business-related concerns by developing concrete solutions tor their problems. The professional norm of enabling help for self-help locates all relevant information in the clients’ territory of knowledge. A dilemma may arise for professionals when clients dis-align in the construction of a solution, given that concrete plans of actions are required but should be developed co-actively based on the clients’ own knowledge. The chapter tackles the interactive consequences of such dis-aligning forms in one coaching session between a coach in training and his client. Data excerpts, analyzed with the help of (applied) conversation analysis, illustrate the coach’s strategies when struggling with this professional dilemma and the client’s strategies to resist the professional’s attempts to non-directively keep her on track.

Published online: 18 December 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.252.05sat
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Graf, Eva-Maria
2015. Linguistische Evaluation eines Coaching-Prozesses – Die Ko-Konstruktion der Veränderung durch Coach und Klientin. In Bewertung von Coachingprozessen, ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo
Graf, Eva-Maria
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