| Coaching is a relationship developed for the purpose of creating some change or to achieve a specific goal. Metaphor is an imaginative linguistic tool representing one thing in terms of another. This phenomenological study explored the experience of 10 coaching clients who participated in a qualitative telephone interview using semi structured open-ended questions. To qualify, each participant identified a moment in coaching in which something significant had happened and remembered that a metaphor was used in the conversation. Categorical content analysis revealed four themes---new awareness, personal shifts, life changes, and reminders---and eight sub-themes: shifts in perspective, shifts in emotion, shifts in action, changes in way of being, transformations, physical cues, emotional cues, and verbal cues. The data revealed a cyclical pattern, proposing a model of self-generated change. The cycle begins with the metaphor evoking an awareness that generates a personal shift, followed by life changes. The metaphors become reminders to stimulate a re-awareness, thereby perpetuating the coaching conversation over time. |
