In this webinar, IOC Harnisch Research Grant recipient Dr. Sandra Diller presents current research on coaching difficult clients. Her research includes studies on overall difficulties with client personalities and clients with high dark triad tendencies. The Webinar will focus in detail on three studies, which examined how competing and/or less-affiliating coaching clients impact the coach’s empathy and authenticity.

In these experimental studies, the client was manipulated, meaning that the client behaved differently with the coach depending on whether they were in the control (neutral behavior) or one of the experimental conditions (high affiliation, low affiliation, high competition, narcissistic tendencies). The results of all these studies revealed that the coach’s expressed empathy does not change dependent on the client. However, the coach’s feelings and inner empathy changed, which could be why coaches reported to feel less authentic. Her latest research also includes studies on the benefits of supervision and mindfulness when dealing with difficult clients. In this interactive webinar, you will have the opportunity to share and learn best practices when it comes to working with difficult coaching clients.

Coaches will learn:

• How to work effectively with difficult clients
• How to stay centered and grounded as a coach
• What coaches can do to minimize the negative impact of difficult clients

Presenter: Sandra Diller

Go to Registration Page

Sandra is a certified coach (University of Salzburg, CoBeCe), trainer (LMU Munich), and mentor (LMU Munich, Center of Leadership and People Management). While working as a coach and trainer, she conducts research on coaching, training, mentoring, and leadership.

Her coaching research includes:

• the differentiation between coaching and training (for example: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJMCE-08-2020-0050/full/pdf?title=supporting-students-with-coaching-or-training-depending-on-their-basic-psychological-needs)
• measuring quality in coaching (for example: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11613-020-00662-8)
• underlying motives in coaching (for example: https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/items/56b633df-316a-4b4a-874f-59aa9663dcbe/1/)
• empathy and trust as success factors in coaching (for example: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21515581.2019.1650751)
• and coaching difficult clients (for example: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17521882.2020.1784973).

Sandra further teaches personnel and leadership development at the University of Salzburg and University of Seeburg. Besides several train-the-trainer seminars, she has been co-responsible for the coaching training and mentoring training at the University of Salzburg. Since 2018, Sandra is part of the jury for the ICF Prism Award, honouring companies that implemented outstanding coaching programmes (more information: https://coachingfederation.org/prism-award).