There is a stage in research where progress becomes difficult to see from the outside. There are no participants to recruit, no fresh data arriving and fewer obvious milestones to celebrate. Instead, there are paragraphs being moved around, analysis decisions being checked, slide titles being simplified and the same question appearing again and again: why does this matter?
That is where I have been recently.
In this update, I share my reflections, and, towards the end, short snippets of what I believe could be useful to organisations, coaches and individuals.
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My August supervision helped me see that I have done a great deal of detailed work. It also showed me how easily I can become so absorbed in the trees that I temporarily lose sight of the forest. A few days later, while working on the introduction, I found myself circling the argument, repeating ideas and struggling to hold the whole shape of the chapter in my head.
This month’s update is about that part of research: the effort involved in turning a complex study into something another person can follow.
Following the decision trail
One of the things I noticed during supervision was that I could explain my decisions. I could talk through the model, why particular covariates had been removed and why they added complexity without materially changing the slope. The reasoning in my mind, though externally, the trail was harder to find.
Despite multiple attempts at ’smart systems’ over the years, I have a habit of capturing thoughts wherever they land: scraps of paper, notes in different places. Comments written to my future self in language that makes perfect sense at the time. Later, I have to become an archaeologist in my own thoughts!
There is something useful in this realisation. Good judgement includes making a sound decision, and it also includes being able to show how I reached it. If I want my research to withstand peer review, the reasoning needs to be visible without depending on memory or a lucky encounter with the correct scrap of paper.
I am experimenting with a simpler decision log: what I changed, why I changed it, what evidence informed the decision and what happened as a result. It needs to be light enough that I will actually use it. A beautiful system that gets abandoned after three days is no help at all (a classic pattern of mine!).
Writing the funnel
The introduction has brought a different challenge. I know what it needs to do. It has to begin with the wider territory, narrow towards the gap and then arrive at the particular contribution of this study. On a good day, I can see that funnel clearly.
On a difficult day, the document starts to feel like one of those sliding-tile puzzles where every move creates a new gap.
I have used a very physical solution before: printing the pages, cutting the paragraphs up and moving them around on the floor or a large table. It works because I can see the whole argument at once. I have resisted returning to it because of the paper involved, but I may have been asking a screen to support a kind of thinking that works better for me in physical space.
There is a wider lesson here. Sometimes persistence means continuing with the task. Sometimes it means changing the conditions around the task so that the brain has a fairer chance of doing it.
Staying with the groundwork
I am SO keen to get to the discussion. That is where the findings can be placed alongside the wider evidence and where the implications begin to open up. It feels closest to the questions that started this project, so it's a very attractive and understandable place to want to be.
I chose to enlist my ‘inner strength’ to hold back; to stabilise the Methods and Results first. Those sections are painstaking, but the Discussion depends on them. If the reported analysis shifts, the interpretation may also shift. So, I stayed with the less glamorous groundwork for a little longer.
This has required me to become more comfortable with working at the edge of my learning. Research at this level should stretch me. Confusion can be information: it may mean that the argument is not yet clear, that a decision has not been adequately documented or that I need another way of looking at the page.
Supervision helps here. It gives me somewhere to test my reasoning and notice the places where I have explained every tree in loving detail without first showing anyone the forest.
Reviewing the BPS standards
Alongside the study, I have been reviewing my development against the British Psychological Society’s Level 8 Standards for Coaching Psychology. This is currently a reflective mapping exercise rather than a formal judgement of competence.
I have been focusing on Standard 4: Independent Research Capability. Recent work provides evidence of several parts of that standard:
- Building and critically justifying the rationale for the study, including the choice to focus on cognitive hardiness and the relationship between that construct and resilience
- Selecting and explaining analytical decisions, including the removal of covariates where added complexity did not contribute meaningfully to the model
- Reporting and interpreting results carefully
- Reviewing the research process and identifying questions that may need future investigation
- Considering where and how the findings could be shared with academic, practitioner and organisational audiences
I can also see development needs. My research decisions require a clearer contemporaneous record. The introduction needs a sharper route from the wider problem to the study’s contribution. My communication needs a deliberate simplification pass so that depth does not become density. These points connect with the standards concerning critical reflection, accurate reporting, review of the research process and communication to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
There is also an honest wellbeing question. In the run-up to supervision, I worked intensively, sometimes beginning at five or six in the morning and continuing for much of the day. I also protected some supportive routines, including eating properly, swimming and yoga. Both parts matter. The ability to work hard does not automatically demonstrate sustainable workload management. Reviewing myself against the standards means paying attention to how the research is being completed as well as the quality of what is produced.
What does this project offer to the world so far?
For organisations
For organisations considering coaching as a wellbeing support, my current reflection is simple: do not separate the person from the conditions in which they are working.
Coaching can offer space to think, notice patterns, clarify priorities and explore choices. It should not become an elegant way of asking someone to tolerate an unhealthy system. My own experience of balancing intense work with deliberate recovery has reminded me that individual strategies matter, while workload, expectations and available resources remain part of the picture.
Organisations also need to decide what they mean by a successful coaching outcome. Performance may matter. So might wellbeing, retention, engagement, goal progress, healthier boundaries or the ability to make a difficult transition with greater agency. These outcomes are related, but they are not interchangeable.
For an organisation commissioning coaching, this suggests having a better conversation at the beginning: What change are we hoping to support, who gets to define it and how will we know whether the coaching has been useful?
For coaches
For coaches looking for innovative perspectives, the research process has made me think about decision trails in coaching.
As a researcher, I need to explain how I reached an analytical decision. As a coach, I may never fully know how a client reached theirs. I can ask. I can invite reflection. I can help someone notice what changed. I do not need to make their process neat for my own reassurance.
There may still be value in helping a client capture the route they travelled, particularly if they want to reuse what they learned. The choice should be led by the client and by what would serve them. Some people benefit from a structured record. Others need room for a conclusion to emerge without having to turn it immediately into a model.
The more innovative stance may sometimes be restraint: staying interested, tolerating incomplete knowledge and resisting the urge to package every useful human experience into a tidy sequence.
I am also taking a practical coaching lesson from the paper-and-scissors problem. When a client appears stuck, the useful question may be about the environment around their thinking. Would they think differently while walking, drawing, speaking aloud or moving objects on a table? A change of medium can reveal something that another hour of determined concentration cannot.
For individuals
For someone facing workplace difficulties or moving through a life transition, coaching can provide a place to hear your own thinking more clearly. You do not need to arrive with a polished goal. Uncertainty, competing priorities and half-formed questions are all workable starting points.
My own recent experience has reminded me that feeling stuck does not always mean that nothing is happening. It may mean that you are trying to hold too many parts of the problem at once. It may mean that the next step needs to be smaller, more visible or tried in a different form.
A coach can help you explore what belongs to you, what belongs to the system around you and where you have room to act. That distinction matters when wellbeing has been affected by work. Coaching can support reflection and agency, but it is not a substitute for appropriate mental-health care, organisational action or formal employment advice when those are needed.
If you are considering coaching during a transition, you might begin with three questions:
- What is taking up the most space in my head at the moment?
- What would feel meaningfully different, even if the whole situation could not be solved immediately?
- What kind of thinking environment helps me hear myself best?
What I am carrying forward
The next stage is clear enough: finish stabilising Methods and Results, rebuild the introduction so that its funnel is visible and create a decision trail that does not require detective work.
I also want to hold onto a gentler interpretation of the messy parts. The scraps of paper, repeated paragraphs and long supervision notes are evidence of a mind working hard on a difficult problem. They also show me where the process needs support.
Perhaps that is the thread running through the research and the coaching. We often make better progress when we can see the whole landscape, understand the next decision and choose conditions that help us think. Occasionally, that may involve standing over a table with a pair of scissors.
Sheela Hobden
www.bluegreencoaching.com
September 2026
I share musings and monthly updates from my research into coaching, resilience, and wellbeing. If you’re a coach, a psychologist, or just curious about what doctoral research actually looks like from the inside — I’d love for you to follow along.
Looking for more research based inspiration?
Check out this podcast series I recorded for the Association for Coaching:
Image: New Zealand Forest by Sheela Hobden