Conceptualising Allyship for Coaching to Promote Social Change

This conceptual study contributes to the increasing interest in coaching for social change. Despite growing interest amongst aligned helping professions, rarely mentioned in coaching is allyship. Though well placed to disrupt social and epistemic injustice, coaching's seemingly politically neutral stance might cause more harm than intended. I conducted a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of literature from coaching, mentoring, social justice, social epistemology, and aligned helping professions, informed by an anti-oppressive research paradigm, to conceptualise allyship for coaching. The result is an argument that allyship-informed coaching can elevate beyond individual interventions to social change by utilising its greatest political resource, its privilege.