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International Journal of Health Promotion and

Education
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Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of

healthy behaviour and achievement of health-
related goals
a b
Stephen Palmer Honorary Professor of Psychology , Irene Tubbs Senior Lecturer &
c
Alison Whybrow Consultant
a
City University, Director of the Centre for Coaching London, UK
b
Centre for Coaching, London, UK
c
Centre for Coaching, London, UK.
Published online: 10 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Stephen Palmer Honorary Professor of Psychology, Irene Tubbs Senior Lecturer & Alison Whybrow
Consultant (2003) Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of healthy behaviour and achievement of health-related
goals, International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 41:3, 91-93, DOI: 10.1080/14635240.2003.10806231

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2003.10806231

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 91

PRACTICE BRIEFING

Health coaching to facilitate the promotion

of healthy behaviour and achievement of
health-related goals
By Stephen Palmer, Honorary Professor of Psychology, City University;
Director of the Centre for Coaching, London, UK; Irene Tubbs, Senior
Lecturer, Centre for Coaching, London, UK; and Alison Whybrow,
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Consultant, Centre for Coaching, London, UK.

Key words: health coaching, coaching for health,
stress management coaching, health-related goals,
cognitive behavioural.
Abstract
Coaching has become acceptable to both business and
individuals to help improve performance, manage
stress and achieve work and personal goals. Yet very
few papers have been published with a specific focus
on health and coaching. This paper highlights the
possible role of coaching to facilitate the promotion
of healthy behaviours and to help individuals achieve
their health-related goals.
Introduction
The practice of personal, life, business, sports,
performance and executive coaching has grown
substantially since the early 1990s (Cockerill 2002,
Fournies 2000, Neenan and Palmer 2001, Parsloe and
Wray 2000, Peltier 2001). Although the term 'coach'
has been borrowed as a metaphor from sport, it is
now applied to the personal and work domains. Thus
the term 'coaching' has entered into the public psyche
beyond the sports pages of the national newspapers
them to learn rather than teaching them - a
facilitation approach (Whitmore 1992, based on
Gallwey, a tennis expert).
2 Coaching- Directly concerned with the immediate
improvement of performance and development of
skills by a form of tutoring or instruction - an
instructional approach (Parsloe 1995 ).
3 Coaching- The art of facilitating the performance,
learning and development of another- a facilitation
approach (Downey 1999).
Psychologists have developed another variation:
4 Coaching psychology is for enhancing wellbeing
and performance in personal life and work domains
with normal, non-clinical populations, under-
pinned by models of coaching grounded in
established adult learning or psychological
approaches (adapted Grant and Palmer 2002).
It can probably be assumed that these definitions
should reflect the nature of coaching as practised by
many practitioners. Therefore the key aspects of
coaching, depending upon the model of coaching
being applied, appear to include enhancing wellbeing,
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learning, facilitation, tutoring, instruction, develop- 0

and is becoming generally accepted as beneficial to ment of skills and improving performance. In ~::J
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its recipients. It can even be seen as trendy having addition, coaching is usually goal and solution UJ
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your own personal life coach. Whereas, in the United focused (Grant 2001). c
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Kingdom, there is still a stigma attached to seeing a "'E
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counsellor or psychotherapist. Health coaching e
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What is coaching? Similar to health education specialists, usually the

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coach takes an active and directive role. Generally, (ij
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summarised below: facilitating the learning process. lf'health coaching'

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or 'coaching for health' is the focus, the coach may 0
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1 Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to help to educate the coachee on specific health-related E
maximise their own performance. It is helping topics and subsequently support them in achieving ~
 92 Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of healthy behaviour and achievement of health-related goals
their health-related goals. As the term coaching is
becoming acceptable to the public, the concept of
health coaching could be more favourably received
by a client group in contrast to attending a health
education lecture. An established health-related
professional body, the Institute of Health Promotion
and Education, provides a definition of health
promotion and health education in their
constitution:
The practice of health promotion and health education
may be described as the organisation and execution
of the influences affecting the environment, as well
as individual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour,
in matters concerning health with a view to enabling
Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 19:42 08 October 2014
communities and individuals to maintain and
promote personal and community health and
wellbeing, together with a proper acceptance and
use of the health and medical services available.
(IHPE 2002)
This definition does not conflict with the general
principles of the coaching approach, although its
focus is on health and it can also be at the community
level. This would be similar to stress or stress
management coaching that is now available. The
International Stress Management Association (UK)
has recognised the practice of this form of coaching
for a number of years. It could be argued that stress
management training and stress management
coaching comes under the umbrella of the health
education field. Another professional body, the
Association for Coaching (2003), includes both stress
management coaching and health coaching on its
website as 'Speciality Coaching'. Thus the term
'health coaching' is entering into general public
awareness, although not necessarily among main-
stream health education or promotion specialists.
Within the field of health, papers have been published
on behavioural counselling which has been used to
educate clients with coronary heart disease (Steptoe
et al1999). Interestingly, the counselling is active and
directive in nature and takes an educational approach
which could be more accurately described as
instructional coaching.
A tentative definition of health coaching is given
below:
c:
0 Health coaching is the practice of health education and
~:::> health promotion within a coaching context, to
ill enhance the wellbeing of individuals and to facilitate
all
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the achievement of their health-related goals.
~ This definition attempts to link health education and
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a. promotion to the key elements of coaching.
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Psychological blocks to change
Q)
J:
0 Downey, M. (1999). Effective Coaching. London: Orion
(ij
E Due to the personal nature of coaching it could
.,0:::> include tackling the health-related psychological
(ij
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0 blocks to change which could be challenged in the
~
E individual or group coaching session. These cognitive
$
.!: or attitudinal blocks to change could be divided into
Health Inhibiting Thinking (HITs) and Health
Enhancing Thinking (HETs). *Cognitive techniques
such as Socratic questioning could be used to help a
client to modify their thinking (Neenan and Palmer
2001). Examples of HITs and, following modification,
their corresponding HETs are illustrated below:
HIT: Exercise makes me sweat, so it can't be good for me.
HET: Sweating isn't a pleasant feeling but I know it is
good for me because it takes all the waste products out of
my body, allowing energy to flow better.
HIT: I've got to eat something to stop me being upset.
HET: I'm allowed to be upset, but what am I getting upset
for? I can do this without bingeing.
HIT: I can't stand this pain. I need more medication.
HET: This pain is bad at times, but I can stand it. I'm
living proof I can stand it. When I use deep breathing or
distraction exercises the pain eases.
HIT: I must get a prescription when I leave or they will
think I am faking it.
HET: I need the doctor to acknowledge that the way I feel
is real.
This would integrate standard cognitive behavioural
techniques into health coaching (Neenan and Palmer
2001).
Conclusion
With the increasing interest in coaching, the
introduction of 'health coaching' or 'coaching for
health' may have an appeal across different gen-
erations. However, there is a lack of published
research that underpins the effectiveness of health
coaching. Although many models of coaching exist
(Bluckert 2003), the application of models to health
coaching which take an educational approach, such
as cognitive-behavioural or multimodal, may provide
promising results (Neenan and Palmer 2001, Palmer
et al2003).
References
Association for Coaching (2003). Association for Coaching
website: http://www.associationforcoaching.com.
Bluckert, P. (2003).zypology ofCoaching and Mentoring. Draft
1. London: European Mentoring and Coaching
Council.
Cockerill, I. (2002). Solutions in Sport Psychology. London:
Thomson.
Business Books.
*Alternatively other terms that could be used with easy-to-
remember acronyms are Health Inhibiting Beliefs (HIEs) and
Health Enhancing Beliefs (HEBs) .
 Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of healthy behaviour and achievement of health-related goals 93

Fournies, F.F. (2000). Coaching for Improved Work

Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Grant, A.M. (2001). Towards a Psychology of Coaching.
Sydney: Coaching Psychology Unit, University of
Sydney.
Grant, A.M. and Palmer, S. (2002). Coaching Psychology.
Meeting held at the Annual Conference of the Division
of Counselling Psychology, British Psychological
Society, Torquay, 18th May.
IHPE (2002). Constitution of the Institute of Health
Promotion and Education. Manchester: IHPE.
Neenan, M. and Palmer, S. (2001). Cognitive Behavioural
Coaching. Stress News, 13(3), 15-18.
Palmer, S., Cooper, C. and Thomas, K. (2003). Creating a
Balance: Managing Stress. London: British Library.
Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 19:42 08 October 2014

Parsloe, E. (1995). Coaching, Mentoring, and Assessing: A

practical guide to developing competence. New York:
Kogan Page.
Parsloe, E. and Wray, M. (2000). Coaching and Mentoring:
Practical methods to improve learning. London: Kogan
Page.
Peltier, B. (2001). The Psychology of Executive Coaching:
Theory and Application. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Steptoe, A., Doherty, S., Rink, E., Kerry, S., Kendrick, T.
and Hilton, S. (1999). Behavioural counselling in
general practice for the promotion of healthy behaviour
among adults at increased risk of coronary heart
disease: randomised trial.
Whitmore,}. (1992). Coaching for Performance. London:
Nicholas Brealey.

Address for correspondence

Stephen Palmer
Centre for Coaching
156 Westcombe Hill
London
SE37DH
UK
Email: dr.palmer@btinternet.com +

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