The Path I Have Walked as a Coach

The Path I Have Walked as a Coach

Sukjae Lee, Ph.D.
Creator of the Effectiveness Coaching Methodology

January 13, 2026

 

As of this year, it has been 24 years since I entered the field of coaching in 2002. As a social psychologist with a strong desire to explore a field in depth, coaching felt like a promising and intriguing emerging domain. In particular, I believed it was an excellent field for investigating the universal principles operating within the coaching phenomenon. Although I practiced coaching as a business, my deeper interest lay in inquiry itself—I approached coaching as a domain of exploration and as a set of individual research themes.

 

Over the past 24 years of inquiry, I have identified the core concepts inherent in the coaching phenomenon, clarified the relationships among those concepts, distilled the central ideas that run through them, and articulated the underlying logic connecting them. I formulated this logic as hypotheses and tested them through my coaching business in practice. For empirical verification, I developed three diagnostic instruments. These multi-dimensional diagnostic tools are specialized instruments designed to examine how the core concept of effectiveness operates. They allowed me to objectively validate coaching activities and outcomes by translating them into measurable changes in effectiveness.

 

As a result of this inquiry, I established an Effectiveness Theory. I articulated the ABC Framework, the 3S-FORM Model, and four cognitive strategies, integrating this logic into what I call the Effectiveness Coaching Model. Using this model, I have explained coaching at the individual, team, and organizational levels, while explicitly linking the individual dimension with the organizational dimension. In doing so, I connected Individual Development (ID) with Organization Development (OD). I developed a logic that enables a coach to work with a single leader while simultaneously linking individual-level change to organizational-level change.

 

 

Today, coaching businesses that address effectiveness at the individual, team, and organizational levels are rapidly expanding. In 2014, advocating that “integrated coaching of individuals, teams, and organizations is the new path,” I published Effectiveness Coaching by a Management Psychologist (Lee, 2014), which compiled my coaching research and cases up to that point. In 2026, I completed an integrated coaching system that connects a framework linking brain – mental models – perspective shifting – desired results with the existing Effectiveness Coaching Methodology (ECM). I am now preparing to publish a book that presents a comprehensive coaching system integrating neuroscience, cognitive science, and ECM.

 

The scene of the Starfield Library at Star Plaza in Samseong-dong shimmered brilliantly. That light flowed warmly toward me. While enjoying a cup of my favorite coffee, I reflected on the past 24 years of my life. I realized that, to a meaningful extent, I have brought to completion what I set out to do.

 

Reference

Lee, S.-J. (2014). Effectiveness Coaching. Seoul: Thinking Partner.