Coaching Research in 2020

The growing international importance and professionalization of coaching shows in a substantive gain in high-quality research. The aim of our contribution (in the form of two consecutive papers) is to take stock of coaching research in the year 2020 both as regards its history, its major findings and its current trends. This has been done repeatedly over the last few years, which in itself attests to the growing importance and relevance of coaching research. The added value of this contribution is its specific focus on eight international meta-analyses on outcome research published since 2010 and on relevant primary studies from the German-based outcome coaching research in the context of negative effects of coaching. The second part of this overview (see Graf & Dionne, Part II under review) will take the reader beyond coaching outcome research into the more recent paradigm of coaching process research, particularly into qualitatively operating linguistic analysis of coaching processes.