Alongside the psychodynamic theories, cognitive-behavioural concepts and theories have found their way into the literature on coaching supervision. Kauffman & Schwartz argue that a cognitive-behaviour is one that can be “identified, observed and measured” (Kaufman & Schwartz, 2004:150). From its early development in the 1960s, a cognitive behavioural approach to supervision had at its heart the notion of “shaping behaviour through reinforcement” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011:194).

In contrast to the emphasis of therapeutic approaches or unconscious factors that may occur in the supervision relationship, a cognitive-behavioural approach to coaching supervision focuses on the thinking process.  Thinking leads to learning a new approach to a task or problem, and in the case of the supervision relationship, identifying new ways for the business coaching practitioner to support their client think through alternative approaches, new ways of thinking and behaving. An old adage that has been one of my mantras since I first heard it many years ago is that you can’t change a persons attitude, only their behaviour. However, through the change in behaviour, slowly attitudes can, and do shift – a reality that many of us experience time and again in our lives as old ways of thinking are challenged and broken down through experience and personal development.

The key for the cognitive-behavioural theorist is the notion of learning and reinforcement until a new behaviour or approach becomes second nature. Skinner (1969) described this as ‘operant conditioning’, a process that he famously illustrated in an experiment that became known as ‘Pavlov’s Dog’. In this experiment a dog would naturally salivate when being fed. At the same time, a bell was associated with the feeding process so that eventually the dog would salivate on the ringing of a bell, even if food was not included at the same time – essentially an automatic response to a stimulus.

Approaching coaching supervision from a cognitive-behavioural perspective has many elements in common with the overall philosophy of coaching where according to Hawkins & Smith (2006) there is a strong developmental goal-oriented focus. Nevertheless there remains a strong emphasis dealing with therapeutic issues rather than a solution-focused approach described by Grant (2012).