Orientation: Coaching facilitates identity work, and metaphors are often used in coaching to make... more Orientation: Coaching facilitates identity work, and metaphors are often used in coaching to make sense of the self. Research purpose: To explore coaching clients’ coaching experience as expressed through metaphors, from an identity work perspective. Motivation for the study: The use of metaphor in coaching has not been realised, and coaching as a vehicle for identity work is underexplored. Research approach/design and method: A hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and qualitative design directed the study. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven clients who had participated in a coaching programme. Reflective metaphors from the interviews constituted the data set, which was analysed through hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Main findings: Guided by identity theory, four themes were co-constructed from the data, which describe how coaching develops a self-processing competence reflected in these iterative cycles: (1) self-exploration and self-reflection; (2) self-awareness and self-insight; (3) selfacceptance and self-determination; and (4) self-actualisation and self-transcendence. These cycles of identity work align with transactional and transformational identity work to enable construction of an independent and interdependent self. Practical/managerial implications: The findings highlight the value of metaphors as a self-reflective sensemaking tool. Coaching is aligned with integrated transactional and transformational identity work, which can be used to assess the transformational value of coaching as a process. Contribution/value-add: The study describes the personal transformational value of coaching through metaphors, and it establishes identity work as a key process outcome of successful coaching. The findings offer a novel conceptualisation of transactional and transformational identity work as a process perspective to effective coaching. Keywords: coaching; identity theory; identity work; metaphor; sensemaking; transformation; hermeneutic phenomenological analysis.
Orientation: Public health challenges affect doctors’ motivation, retention and service delivery.... more Orientation: Public health challenges affect doctors’ motivation, retention and service delivery. Understanding their quality of work life will shed light on managing the impact of these challenges.Research purpose: This study aimed to construct an understanding of oncology doctors’ quality of work life in a public hospital.Motivation of the study: Variability in conceptualising quality of work life points to the need for context-specific research to address unique work challenges and employee motivation. Quality of work life is especially relevant in public healthcare oncology units, where job demands are high and resources to support quality medical services are low.Research approach/design and method: The study followed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and qualitative design. Data were gathered from nine oncology doctors using virtual, semi-structured interviews and analysed through interpretive phenomenological analysis.Main findings: Findings highlight the need to addres...
International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 2024
This study employed a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore personal tran... more This study employed a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore personal transformation and how it manifests in the coaching process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven senior leaders who had previously engaged in a coaching programme of at least six sessions. The findings describe personal transformation as a self-processing competence that evolves before, during and after the coaching process. Three themes pose personal transformation as: (i) an activated processing of the self; (ii) an evolving processing of the self; and (iii) a continued internal self-processing competency.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, Feb 13, 2023
Purpose: The invaluable, yet challenging role of pastors in the community signifies the need to u... more Purpose: The invaluable, yet challenging role of pastors in the community signifies the need to understand and care for their well-being. Well-being, conceptualized in the multidimensional construct of flourishing, does not explicitly include spiritual well-being, yet, it is the foundation of pastors' well-being. In this article we aim to describe pastors' spiritual wellbeing and in so doing, highlight its fundamental importance in pastors' flourishing in the ministry. Methods: Positioned in the interpretive pragmatic paradigm, data were gathered and analysed from three focus groups with 18 pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church and the Uniting Reformed Church of South Africa. Interactive qualitative analysis was applied, and results were conceptually refined through narrative synthesis. Results: Four themes were constructed to describe pastors' spiritual well-being namely: i) an altruistic calling; ii) discipleship iii) seasons of the ministry; and iv) ethics. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance and essence of the spiritual aspects predominant to pastors' well-being. Attending to spiritual well-being will enhance their resilience and constructive coping and is integral to their way of flourishing at work. This proposes an extension of the flourishing framework to include spiritual well-being as an explicitly conceptualized sub-dimension for application to the study's Christian pastoral context.
Law enforcement poses a difficult work environment. Employees’ wellbeing is uniquely taxed in cop... more Law enforcement poses a difficult work environment. Employees’ wellbeing is uniquely taxed in coping with daily violent, aggressive and hostile encounters. These challenges are compounded for women, because law enforcement remains to be a male-dominated occupational context. Yet, many women in law enforcement display resilience and succeed in maintaining a satisfying career. This study explores the experience of being authentic from a best-self perspective, for women with successful careers in the South African police and traffic law enforcement services. Authenticity research substantiates a clear link between feeling authentic and experiencing psychological wellbeing. The theoretical assumption on which the study is based holds that being authentic relates to a sense of best-self and enables constructive coping and adjustment in a challenging work environment. A qualitative study was conducted on a purposive sample of 12 women, comprising 6 police officers and 6 traffic officers f...
Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the value of metaphors as part of a reflexive p... more Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the value of metaphors as part of a reflexive practice in the context of the evolving frame of reference journey of PhD students in a consulting psychology programme. Background: This study reports on the journey of how the personal frames of reference of PhD students in consulting psychology had evolved at a large open-distance and e-learning university in South Africa. As their respective journeys of becoming consulting psychologists unfolded, participants’ evolutionary journeys were viewed through metaphors. Few studies have investigated how metaphors could be used as a powerful evocative tool to go beyond the rational, conscious and sanitized responses of participants, to explore their underlying frames of reference by surfacing and eliciting implicit meaning. Methodology: This study was based on a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological stance and congruently employed principles of socio-analytic inquiry. The context of this...
South African managers in public service consistently face challenges related to managing a well-... more South African managers in public service consistently face challenges related to managing a well-adjusted and productive diverse workforce. Following the notion that leadership authenticity fosters positive psychological employee capacity, the aim of this study was to explore the meaning essence of authenticity as lived in the worklife experiences of senior managers in public service. Five senior managers in public service were purposefully selected based on their articulated challenges with being authentic at work, whilst attending a diversity sensitivity workshop. From a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective, in-depth interviews were used, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded two predominant themes offering a description of what it means to be authentic. Authenticity is experienced as an affective state that results from a continuous self-appraisal of the extent to which expression of self is congruent with a subjective and socially constructed expectation of...
In this article, I explore the researcher identity of senior women academics in a South African i... more In this article, I explore the researcher identity of senior women academics in a South African institution of higher education. The aim was to uncover the identity tensions they experience in relation to being a researcher and to understand how they respond to and resolve these tensions. Three focus groups, based on the socioanalytic method of social dream drawing, provided the data. Data were analyzed through hermeneutic phenomenological reflection. Identity theory was applied as a conceptual framework to guide my interpretation of the data. Through their collective reflection on being researchers, the women became cognizant of identity tensions and their engagement with these reflected intrapersonal processing akin to identity work. In the findings, I highlight purposeful, collective identity work as a resource that enabled these women to re-construct self-defeating gendered conflicts in their researcherhood . By uncovering their identity tensions and related emotions, a sense of...
This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related an... more This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related and contribute to the health and wellbeing of 13 women working in South African higher education institutions. Drawing from Antonovsky’s work on salutogenesis data are analyzed in terms of three sub-components, namely, manageability, comprehensibility, and meaningfulness. Interview data on manageability point to an action component where the pursuit of work-life balance is uniquely experienced by women, not only as a challenge, but is also actively pursued as a strength resource. On comprehensibility, the data captured women’s attitudes in terms of being realistic and understanding of others and of the work context. The data show that women rely most on meaningfulness as a coping resource wheather they are speaking of their life orientation (SOC) or their spiritual orientation. Spirituality in this study is connected foremost to transpersonality. A connection between women’s spirituality a...
Orientation : This article reports on a quantitative-relational study addressing the impact of se... more Orientation : This article reports on a quantitative-relational study addressing the impact of sense of coherence (SOC), which is a psychological-wellness construct, on the financial-health profile of employees in an insurance company. Research purpose : The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between psychological wellness as operationalised in the SOC construct and in financial health. Motivation for the study : Financial pressure can be a major stressor in the workplace, affecting employees' ability to function optimally. The debt crisis in South Africa is therefore necessitating employers to invest in the financial health of their employees. In light of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005, employers should, in fact, provide debt counselling to employees struggling with financial problems. In the South African context, however, studies investigating the potential influence of psychological-wellness constructs on financial health are lacking. Research design,...
The development of managers’ emotional intelligence (EI) has been advocated as fundamental to the... more The development of managers’ emotional intelligence (EI) has been advocated as fundamental to their success as leaders. Despite the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) being one of the most widely applied psychological measures of personality type in leadership development, there is inconclusive evidence on the relationship between personality type and EI. This study examined the relationship between personality preference types and emotional intelligence (EI) in a sample of 1 121 employees in a South African investment bank. Instruments for data collection included the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Quotient (Bar-On EQ-i). Data were analyzed utilizing one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine the effects of personality preference types on EI. Findings suggest a significant, positive relationship between overall EI and the personality preferences of extroversion, thinking and judging. The feeling preference affected interpersonal EI ...
Orientation: Coaching facilitates identity work, and metaphors are often used in coaching to make... more Orientation: Coaching facilitates identity work, and metaphors are often used in coaching to make sense of the self. Research purpose: To explore coaching clients’ coaching experience as expressed through metaphors, from an identity work perspective. Motivation for the study: The use of metaphor in coaching has not been realised, and coaching as a vehicle for identity work is underexplored. Research approach/design and method: A hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and qualitative design directed the study. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven clients who had participated in a coaching programme. Reflective metaphors from the interviews constituted the data set, which was analysed through hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Main findings: Guided by identity theory, four themes were co-constructed from the data, which describe how coaching develops a self-processing competence reflected in these iterative cycles: (1) self-exploration and self-reflection; (2) self-awareness and self-insight; (3) selfacceptance and self-determination; and (4) self-actualisation and self-transcendence. These cycles of identity work align with transactional and transformational identity work to enable construction of an independent and interdependent self. Practical/managerial implications: The findings highlight the value of metaphors as a self-reflective sensemaking tool. Coaching is aligned with integrated transactional and transformational identity work, which can be used to assess the transformational value of coaching as a process. Contribution/value-add: The study describes the personal transformational value of coaching through metaphors, and it establishes identity work as a key process outcome of successful coaching. The findings offer a novel conceptualisation of transactional and transformational identity work as a process perspective to effective coaching. Keywords: coaching; identity theory; identity work; metaphor; sensemaking; transformation; hermeneutic phenomenological analysis.
Orientation: Public health challenges affect doctors’ motivation, retention and service delivery.... more Orientation: Public health challenges affect doctors’ motivation, retention and service delivery. Understanding their quality of work life will shed light on managing the impact of these challenges.Research purpose: This study aimed to construct an understanding of oncology doctors’ quality of work life in a public hospital.Motivation of the study: Variability in conceptualising quality of work life points to the need for context-specific research to address unique work challenges and employee motivation. Quality of work life is especially relevant in public healthcare oncology units, where job demands are high and resources to support quality medical services are low.Research approach/design and method: The study followed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and qualitative design. Data were gathered from nine oncology doctors using virtual, semi-structured interviews and analysed through interpretive phenomenological analysis.Main findings: Findings highlight the need to addres...
International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 2024
This study employed a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore personal tran... more This study employed a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore personal transformation and how it manifests in the coaching process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven senior leaders who had previously engaged in a coaching programme of at least six sessions. The findings describe personal transformation as a self-processing competence that evolves before, during and after the coaching process. Three themes pose personal transformation as: (i) an activated processing of the self; (ii) an evolving processing of the self; and (iii) a continued internal self-processing competency.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, Feb 13, 2023
Purpose: The invaluable, yet challenging role of pastors in the community signifies the need to u... more Purpose: The invaluable, yet challenging role of pastors in the community signifies the need to understand and care for their well-being. Well-being, conceptualized in the multidimensional construct of flourishing, does not explicitly include spiritual well-being, yet, it is the foundation of pastors' well-being. In this article we aim to describe pastors' spiritual wellbeing and in so doing, highlight its fundamental importance in pastors' flourishing in the ministry. Methods: Positioned in the interpretive pragmatic paradigm, data were gathered and analysed from three focus groups with 18 pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church and the Uniting Reformed Church of South Africa. Interactive qualitative analysis was applied, and results were conceptually refined through narrative synthesis. Results: Four themes were constructed to describe pastors' spiritual well-being namely: i) an altruistic calling; ii) discipleship iii) seasons of the ministry; and iv) ethics. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance and essence of the spiritual aspects predominant to pastors' well-being. Attending to spiritual well-being will enhance their resilience and constructive coping and is integral to their way of flourishing at work. This proposes an extension of the flourishing framework to include spiritual well-being as an explicitly conceptualized sub-dimension for application to the study's Christian pastoral context.
Law enforcement poses a difficult work environment. Employees’ wellbeing is uniquely taxed in cop... more Law enforcement poses a difficult work environment. Employees’ wellbeing is uniquely taxed in coping with daily violent, aggressive and hostile encounters. These challenges are compounded for women, because law enforcement remains to be a male-dominated occupational context. Yet, many women in law enforcement display resilience and succeed in maintaining a satisfying career. This study explores the experience of being authentic from a best-self perspective, for women with successful careers in the South African police and traffic law enforcement services. Authenticity research substantiates a clear link between feeling authentic and experiencing psychological wellbeing. The theoretical assumption on which the study is based holds that being authentic relates to a sense of best-self and enables constructive coping and adjustment in a challenging work environment. A qualitative study was conducted on a purposive sample of 12 women, comprising 6 police officers and 6 traffic officers f...
Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the value of metaphors as part of a reflexive p... more Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the value of metaphors as part of a reflexive practice in the context of the evolving frame of reference journey of PhD students in a consulting psychology programme. Background: This study reports on the journey of how the personal frames of reference of PhD students in consulting psychology had evolved at a large open-distance and e-learning university in South Africa. As their respective journeys of becoming consulting psychologists unfolded, participants’ evolutionary journeys were viewed through metaphors. Few studies have investigated how metaphors could be used as a powerful evocative tool to go beyond the rational, conscious and sanitized responses of participants, to explore their underlying frames of reference by surfacing and eliciting implicit meaning. Methodology: This study was based on a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological stance and congruently employed principles of socio-analytic inquiry. The context of this...
South African managers in public service consistently face challenges related to managing a well-... more South African managers in public service consistently face challenges related to managing a well-adjusted and productive diverse workforce. Following the notion that leadership authenticity fosters positive psychological employee capacity, the aim of this study was to explore the meaning essence of authenticity as lived in the worklife experiences of senior managers in public service. Five senior managers in public service were purposefully selected based on their articulated challenges with being authentic at work, whilst attending a diversity sensitivity workshop. From a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective, in-depth interviews were used, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis yielded two predominant themes offering a description of what it means to be authentic. Authenticity is experienced as an affective state that results from a continuous self-appraisal of the extent to which expression of self is congruent with a subjective and socially constructed expectation of...
In this article, I explore the researcher identity of senior women academics in a South African i... more In this article, I explore the researcher identity of senior women academics in a South African institution of higher education. The aim was to uncover the identity tensions they experience in relation to being a researcher and to understand how they respond to and resolve these tensions. Three focus groups, based on the socioanalytic method of social dream drawing, provided the data. Data were analyzed through hermeneutic phenomenological reflection. Identity theory was applied as a conceptual framework to guide my interpretation of the data. Through their collective reflection on being researchers, the women became cognizant of identity tensions and their engagement with these reflected intrapersonal processing akin to identity work. In the findings, I highlight purposeful, collective identity work as a resource that enabled these women to re-construct self-defeating gendered conflicts in their researcherhood . By uncovering their identity tensions and related emotions, a sense of...
This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related an... more This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related and contribute to the health and wellbeing of 13 women working in South African higher education institutions. Drawing from Antonovsky’s work on salutogenesis data are analyzed in terms of three sub-components, namely, manageability, comprehensibility, and meaningfulness. Interview data on manageability point to an action component where the pursuit of work-life balance is uniquely experienced by women, not only as a challenge, but is also actively pursued as a strength resource. On comprehensibility, the data captured women’s attitudes in terms of being realistic and understanding of others and of the work context. The data show that women rely most on meaningfulness as a coping resource wheather they are speaking of their life orientation (SOC) or their spiritual orientation. Spirituality in this study is connected foremost to transpersonality. A connection between women’s spirituality a...
Orientation : This article reports on a quantitative-relational study addressing the impact of se... more Orientation : This article reports on a quantitative-relational study addressing the impact of sense of coherence (SOC), which is a psychological-wellness construct, on the financial-health profile of employees in an insurance company. Research purpose : The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between psychological wellness as operationalised in the SOC construct and in financial health. Motivation for the study : Financial pressure can be a major stressor in the workplace, affecting employees' ability to function optimally. The debt crisis in South Africa is therefore necessitating employers to invest in the financial health of their employees. In light of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005, employers should, in fact, provide debt counselling to employees struggling with financial problems. In the South African context, however, studies investigating the potential influence of psychological-wellness constructs on financial health are lacking. Research design,...
The development of managers’ emotional intelligence (EI) has been advocated as fundamental to the... more The development of managers’ emotional intelligence (EI) has been advocated as fundamental to their success as leaders. Despite the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) being one of the most widely applied psychological measures of personality type in leadership development, there is inconclusive evidence on the relationship between personality type and EI. This study examined the relationship between personality preference types and emotional intelligence (EI) in a sample of 1 121 employees in a South African investment bank. Instruments for data collection included the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Quotient (Bar-On EQ-i). Data were analyzed utilizing one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine the effects of personality preference types on EI. Findings suggest a significant, positive relationship between overall EI and the personality preferences of extroversion, thinking and judging. The feeling preference affected interpersonal EI ...
This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related an... more This study investigates how the concepts sense of coherence and spirituality are inter-related and contribute to the health and wellbeing of 13 women working in South African higher education institutions. Drawing from Antonovsky’s work on salutogenesis data are analyzed in terms of three sub-components, namely, manageability, comprehensibility, and meaningfulness. Interview data on manageability point to an action component where the pursuit of work-life balance is uniquely experienced by women, not only as a challenge, but is also actively pur - sued as a strength resource. On comprehensibility, the data captured women’s attitudes in terms of being real - istic and understanding of others and of the work context. The data show that women rely most on meaningful - ness as a coping resource wheather they are speaking of their life orientation (SOC) or their spiritual orientation. Spirituality in this study is connected foremost to transpersonality. A connection between women’s spirituality and their sense of coherence, is made by positing that combined, they serve as a coping and wellbeing resource in the work place. A “recursive cosmosis model” is then offered to illustrate the key salutogenic and spiritual strength resources used by women leaders in this study.
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Papers by Antoni Barnard
the health and wellbeing of 13 women working in South African higher education institutions. Drawing from
Antonovsky’s work on salutogenesis data are analyzed in terms of three sub-components, namely, manageability,
comprehensibility, and meaningfulness. Interview data on manageability point to an action component where the
pursuit of work-life balance is uniquely experienced by women, not only as a challenge, but is also actively pur
-
sued as a strength resource. On comprehensibility, the data captured women’s attitudes in terms of being real
-
istic and understanding of others and of the work context. The data show that women rely most on meaningful
-
ness as a coping resource wheather they are speaking of their life orientation (SOC) or their spiritual orientation.
Spirituality in this study is connected foremost to transpersonality. A connection between women’s spirituality
and their sense of coherence, is made by positing that combined, they serve as a coping and wellbeing resource
in the work place. A “recursive cosmosis model” is then offered to illustrate the key salutogenic and spiritual
strength resources used by women leaders in this study.