The Power of Life Coaching, Abridged Edition: A Model for Ethical Business and Leadership Development

By Holley Swanson Clough and James Barnes

University adult programs are recruiting and retaining the fastest growing student segment in higher education. Yet, two of the biggest challenges faced by organizations today are declining enrollment and decreasing retention rates. In this time of globalization, artificial intelligence, and shifting consumer preferences, it is not business or education as usual. The leading challenges faced by business and education sectors both are a declining workforce and enrollment retention rates. Organizations, comprised of adult learners, need to adapt to accommodate this complex population.
The updated Power of Life Coaching offers a how-to guide for business owners, organizational leaders, human resource development personnel, as well as enrollment personnel, seeking to address these challenges while transforming the lives of those they lead and serve along the way. Comparative research contrasting key missional alignment indicators determined that life coaching has the most significant transformational impact on adult learners' lives. In response, this ethical coaching model was developed based on adult experiential learning and values-based institutional assessment, all in alignment with the International Coach Federation's ethically founded competencies. This text is theoretically based, delivering a coaching technique for adult learner satisfaction, leading to increased retention rates. The Power of Life Coaching is a manual for assisting personnel and teams to fully embrace and live out their mission and values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725259249

Holley Swanson Clough

Holley S. Clough is an Adjunct Professor for The Kings University and Lipscomb University. She holds a PCC Certification from the International Coach Federation.  Dr. Clough is a Board Member for World Team, Intl., Christian Adult Higher Education Association, and Mission Connexion. She coaches, teaches, and presents regularly to adult students, church organizations, seminaries, and adult education conference venues about life coaching and competency based experiential learning founded on theological principles.

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The Power of Life Coaching, Abridged Edition

A Model for Ethical Business and Leadership Development

Holley Swanson Clough

Foreword by James Barnes

The Power of Life Coaching, Abridged Edition

A Model for Ethical Business and Leadership Development

Copyright © 2021 Holley Swanson Clough. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-6058-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-5923-2

ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-5924-9

01/25/21

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Coaching Rationale for Recruitment and Retention

Chapter 2: Theoretical Foundations of a Coaching Model

Chapter 3: Training for Transformational Coaching

Chapter 4: Life Coaching Model and the Advisor Role

Chapter 5: Practical Application of Coaching for Business Advising

Appendix A: Project Evaluation

Appendix B: Coaching Meeting Plan Form

Appendix C: Model Implementation Program

Appendix D: Model Implementation Semester

Appendix E: Wisconsin Lutheran College Case Study

Appendix F: Indiana Wesleyan University Case Study

Appendix G: Theological Foundation for Using Life Coaching

Bibliography

Foreword

The Power of Life Coaching is the result of ground‐breaking research. Based on solid theoretical foundations, the book provides practical applications providing increased understandings for effective advising and life­calling techniques within higher education in a new and entrepreneurial way. The Power of Life Coaching comes at a most propitious time as the number of adult learners entering colleges with a clear sense of calling and life direction is declining dramatically.

Whether advisor, faculty member, or administrator, application of principles contained in The Power of Life Coaching will enable you to more fully embrace and live out your personal calling and purpose. Also, this innovative coaching model employs transformational leadership skills that will serve to equip adult learners in more fully realizing their calling. One significant result will be increased retention rates as life meaning and purpose converge with calling. The research is quite clear, those learners with clearly defined and realistic goals and calling (purpose) will remain enrolled in significantly greater percentages. The result is a win/win for both learners and institutions/organizations.

The Power of Life Coaching is a manual for providing increased understandings of advising. It will assist advisors, business managers, and HR administrators in not only more fully embracing and living out their calling and life direction but also in laying out a model for processing strategies which provide practical, straightforward guidance to advisors.

The Power of Life Coaching is also a how‐to guide and model for adult programs desiring to transform the lives of adult learners they lead and serve. It is a deep well of concepts, ideas, and methods that will help readers be the leaders they are meant to be and help learners do the same. Schools such as Indiana Wesleyan University and Wisconsin Lutheran College are exploring missional growth and retention of students through this coaching model.

In addition, although the originally intended audience for The Power of Life Coaching was Christian institutions and organizations, the foundational and underlying principles are extremely applicable to secular institutions and organizations intent on increasing their effectiveness in not only increasing retention of students, and thereby extending the time for impacting adult learners/clients/participants with the life coaching model, but also resulting in adult learners/clients/participants who have an increased and clearer focus of appropriate life goals and direction.

The effective implementation of the principles contained in The Power of Life Coaching will transform your adult learners, your institute, and your own life as well.

James Barnes, Ph.D. is President Emeritus of Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana.

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated in memory of Dr. Daniel Lockwood, President Emeritus of Multnomah University.  Dr. Lockwood provided invaluable support for the exploration of using coaching within the adult program from the initiation of the doctoral project.  It is with his memory that this publication is produced and thereby provided to the academic community at large. A special thank you is given to Jani Lockwood and Dr. Katie Buvoltz for continued prayer, editing support, and feedback throughout the project.

Thank you to the many faculty and administrators who have made significant contributions to this text for the benefit of coaching within academic advising.  Thank you, also to the Christian Adult Higher Education Association for endorsing and supporting this project.  With deep gratitude, I thank my husband and family, as well as my parents, John and Carol Swanson, for their belief in education and encouragement for continuation of the project.  Most importantly, I thank God for the opportunities He has provided to allow this project to reach a successful conclusion.

1

Coaching Rationale for Recruitment and Retention

University programs are working to recruit and retain a fluctuating adult learner segment in higher education, a sector still showing promise but not flourishing at the same levels as in the early 2000s. A 2020 Department of Education report counted a 19.8 million enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions with a projected increase of 3 percent to 20.3 million in 2028. While enrollment for learners who are 25 to 34 years old increased 41 percent between 2000 and 2017, enrollments are projected to be 6 percent lower in 2028. Learners who are 35 years old and older increased 6 percent between 2000 and 2017, and their enrollments are projected to rise an additional 5 percent between 2017 and 2028.¹ This shifting data validates universities’ need to employ best recruiting and retention practices, but what about adult learner retention efforts outside the education sector?

It is not education or business as usual. In January 2020, Margaret Rogers, a business consultant, stated in Harvard Business Review, We are in the middle of a work revolution.² Globalization, artificial intelligence, and shifting consumer preferences are her noted revolutions that necessitate immediate change and create unprecedented circumstances for employers. Keeping up with the pace of change has always been in steep demand. Imagine the need, moving forward, as we deal with unique global-wide health concerns, along with political and economic unrest? This is a critical time for the education sector to retain students and the corporate sector to retain needed organizational talent. However, according to a Work Institute report, more than 27 out of every 100 US employees quit their jobs in 2019. Forty-two million US workers decided there was something better elsewhere. Voluntary turnover costs exceeded $630 billion in 2019.³ Why are employees walking away? According to Work Institute, the prevalent reason is lack of growth and development opportunities within the workplace.⁴ This book is about growth and development; it is about retention; it is ultimately about adult transformation. Both the education and corporate sectors are parallel in their need to recruit and retain key personnel—be it students, employees, or in some cases, both—as evidenced by the up and coming 7.7 million students who will be 25 years of age or older.⁵ What do we know about those we seek to recruit, retain, and develop?

The Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success⁶ states that today’s traditional learner is not your typical 18 plus year old, living on campus. Rather, today’s learners are older, more diverse, and have more work and family obligations to balance. The center found that 51 percent of learners are considered independent. The characteristics of an independent learner are:

1.24 years or older

2.Married

3.Responsible for legal dependents other than a spouse

4.Orphans or wards of the court (or were wards of the court until age 18)

5.Veterans of the US armed services or

6.Homeless or at risk of homelessness

They also found 66 percent of learners are employed either full- or part-time, 26 percent are parents, 15 percent are single parents, and 51 percent are low income.

These characteristics pose challenges to growth, retention, and workplace success. The overall focus of this book is to experience the development and growth of business-based clients/employees through a seamless recruitment and retention coaching model, which will yield a lifetime of fruitful service.⁷ It is proposed that transformational life coaching will allow clients/employees to respond to movement within their person. This, in turn, will inspire them to dream of the new vocational passions that are experienced through their choice of career path and employment. Life coaching meets the critical need for effective recruitment of clients/employees through touchpoints of movement into the retention processes, addressing their challenges. Incorporation of life coaching as a strategic process within recruitment and retention will foster the growth of a client/employee developmentally through client/employee-oriented advancement goals. Life coaching will also align with organizational mission statements.

Clients/employees pursuing career positions often wish to improve their job potential, desire to accomplish a vocational goal and seek to fulfill a calling on their life. They are making a paradigm shift in their lives by pursuing career changes while carrying on with all their other responsibilities. An organization that desires to fulfill its organizational mission must reflect on how to have the most significant transformational impact on the lives of its clients/employees. This book reasons that a reproducible model using life coaching provides support to maximize the client/employee experience.

The problem was aptly stated a decade ago by Marc Wilson from Hesser College concerning adult student retention at the 2010 Proceedings of the Association for Continuing Higher Education:

Given projections that predict that soon,

60

percent of higher education students will be non-traditional and the current national initiative to significantly increase the number of college graduates, and the reality that adults are twice as likely to fail to persist until graduation than traditional aged student, it seems clear that theoretical models must be developed and research undertaken that will positively impact adult student retention.⁸

Therefore, the data informs us that postsecondary institutions face the challenge of working with the complicated lives of adult learners. This book, originally for enrollment and advising personnel, includes training on life coaching techniques. These techniques are transferable to business environments and those serving in the role of a client/employee advocate referred to as a business advisor henceforth. As an advisor, you will be educated on the following points:

•Coaching techniques provide a method for service efficiency and seamless transition between the steps of the recruiting/retention processes.

•Coaching is driven by the client/employee, delivered by the advisor, and inspired by the value-driven passion in the individual, establishing organizational trust.

•Coaching is highly advantageous for clients/employees, helping them work through issues and develop goals to be successful, thereby increasing retention and building bridges.

The literature review for this study suggested there is limited empirical work and a gap in research about adult undergraduate students returning to higher education. Findings have recommended future research in areas of adult identity and influence in learning.⁹ It has also been suggested, coaching psychology needs to develop and formalize a body of teachable knowledge that can sustain and advance this new and vibrant area of behavioral science.¹⁰

Teachable knowledge is best presented with theoretical underpinnings regarding adult learning and coaching theory. Wisdom is the key element in how adults learn. The following research on wisdom gives insight on how to practically help a client/employee process learning with advising through coaching.

Purpose

This book aims to lead business advisors to develop a coaching-based recruitment and retention process within their organizations. This book focuses specifically on training advisors. The model developed for this training is centered on values-based and theoretical comparative interviews of advisors from higher education institutions.

The question poses itself, What if there were a seamless model? Life coaching is a recruitment and retention tool proposed to align the prospective student with their institutional mission and the client/employee with their organizational