Michael Cavanagh & Stephen Palmer

Welcome to this issue of the International Coaching Psychology Review (ICPR). It is the first issue for 2009 and for our fourth volume. As has been our practice, this is a special edition with the topic of Coaching and Leadership. Travis Kemp has brought together an excellent series of papers from authors of note around the world. Together they represent one of the strongest collections of papers on leadership coaching available in the literature. Indeed, this issue of the ICPR on coaching and leadership looks to be a red letter issue.

As Travis mentions in his guest editorial, this is indeed a timely topic. We are moving into a world where many of our past assumptions and expectations about the world seem to be more and more uncertain. Travis has mentioned the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Pundits tell us we are moving from the GFC through a global economic crisis toward another GEC - a Global Employment Crisis. Change is not limited to markets. Around the world we are told there is an increasing incidence of extreme weather events. Here in Australia we have just experienced the effect of such an extreme set of weather conditions as they fanned the worst bushfires in the history of European settlement.

These are times when it is easy to respond fearfully, and to retreat to past orthodoxies. However, it is also in such times that innovative and courageous leadership is needed. This is true of leadership at all levels, and in all its forms, including coaching. Coaching and coaching psychology are ideally placed to assist leaders in developing new, creative responses to the challenges of the present and the future, but only if we can stand beside our clients as they struggle to develop larger, more encompassing perspectives on the systems in which they find themselves. This means that we too must enter the fray, and do the hard work of expanding our understandings, perspectives and skills. A world which calls for more flexible, responsive and sophisticated leaders, also calls for more flexible, responsive and sophisticated coaches.

Thankfully we are being well served in this task of continued development. The range of coaching psychology and coaching conferences, symposia and other gatherings continues to grow. In the UK, the British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology (SGCP) two-day conference in December was again a great success. The SGCP decided that this particular conference would be the 1st European Coaching Psychology Conference. It was an exciting event with speakers and delegates attending from all over Europe. Roundtable discussions included the state of coaching psychology in Europe and how coaching psychology can be further developed in the region. There was so much support for the conference, it was decided that the SGCP would sponsor the 2nd European Coaching Psychology Conference to be held in December, 2009. In Australia, the IGCP symposium was the best yet, with international and local speakers presenting a range of topics. One has only to conduct a search on the web to see the ever-burgeoning number of conferences and publications servicing the fields of both coaching and coaching psychology.

Given this growing number of publications, the ICPR will be moving from three smaller issues per year to two larger issues. The logistics of publication make publication in this format more cost effective and we hope, more rewarding for the reader. In the UK, SGCP members receive a hardcopy version of the ICPR and this change will reduce printing and postage costs. There is another change in this issue; to keep our members up-to-date with IGCP and SGCP activities, we now include a much needed News Section.

Once again, we commend this excellent edition to you, and would like to register our thanks to Dr Travis Kemp who has done such an excellent job as special editor for this issue. Happy reading!

Correspondence
Michael Cavanagh
Coaching Psychology Unit,
Department of Psychology,
Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.
E-mail: michaelc@psych.usyd.edu.au

Stephen Palmer
Coaching Psychology Unit,
Department of Psychology,
City University, Northampton Square,
London, UK.
E-mail: dr.palmer@btinternet.com