Does Acceptance and Commitment Coaching work?

A summary of three studies showing the impact of Acceptance and Commitment Coaching

I often talk about the evidence base for Acceptance and Commitment Coaching. This is partly because I had the opportunity to contribute to it myself (thanks to Goldsmiths, University of London for funding that work). My research directly tested Acceptance and Commitment Coaching to see whether it has the impact we think it does and how it works. It consisted of three empirical studies.

I wanted to provide a simple summary of each study within this research for people who are interested in the impact and evidence-base for Acceptance and Commitment Coaching.

The first study was a short coaching intervention of just one session. In this session, people were asked to set goals, and also developed some psychological flexibility skills. The repeated measures analysis showed the impact of this brief Acceptance and Commitment Coaching intervention on coachee general mental health, generalised self-efficacy, life satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, goal-directed thinking, goal attainment, and psychological flexibility.

The second study was a relatively large randomised controlled trial (RCT). The goal of this study was to see the impact of workplace Acceptance and Commitment Coaching on coachee work performance, general mental health, generalised self-efficacy, job satisfaction, job motivation, goal directed thinking, goal attainment, and psychological flexibility with senior managers in the UK Civil Service. The analysis from this study showed that increases in psychological flexibility mediated improvements in general mental health, generalised self-efficacy, goal directed thinking, and goal attainment.

The final study compared the effects of psychological flexibility and working alliance using data from the coaching arm of the RCT study. These parallel meditation analyses revealed that significant increases in psychological flexibility mediated increases in generalised self-efficacy, goal-directed thinking, and goal attainment. Despite significant increases in working alliance over time, it did not account for any change in study variables when compared to psychological flexibility.

I think the overall findings of this research suggest that Acceptance and Commitment Coaching is an effective and safe way to improve performance and wellbeing in coaching.

If you’d like to know more about this research, the full thesis is available open-access.

Skews, R. A. 2018. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Informed Coaching: Examining Outcomes and Mechanisms of Change. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London. https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26104/1/IMS_thesis_SkewsR_2018.pdf