Chapter 5

The Phases of Change

To the client, the process of change can feel like a journey into unknown territory. Most clients have never taken this trip before and would benefit from a guide who could point out the milestones and landmarks and let them know how far they have come and how far they still have to go. A coach who understands the experience of behavior change can provide this road map.

James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo Di Clemente (1994) discovered just such a road map. Through their ground-breaking research, they defined the step-by-step process that people experience during behavior change. Prochaska and his colleagues studied more than one thousand people who successfully changed habits such as smoking, drug use, and ...

Get Coaching Leaders: Guiding People Who Guide Others now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.