How Good is a Coachee’s Mentalizing Capacity? Measuring Reflective Functioning in the Coaching Process

Abstract

Mentalization is the basis of the human ability to understand interpersonal behaviour and is consid-ered a key competence in psychotherapy research. We apply mentalization theory to workplace coaching and argue for its added value from a conceptual perspective. We illustrate its empirical potential with an exploratory analysis of a coaching process, in which coaching session transcripts are rated using a rating instrument established in psychotherapy (namely the Reflective Functioning Scale; Fonagy et al. 1998). We find indications that the coachee's mentalization changes over the course of the coaching engagement and that mentalization fluctuates considerably within individual coaching sessions.

Keywords

• workplace coaching
• reflection
• mentalization
• reflective functioning scale
• rating