Trust me, I am a caring coach: The benefits of establishing trustworthiness during coaching by communicating benevolence

A client's trust in the coach is essential for a well-functioning coaching interaction. This trust depends on the coach's trustworthiness in terms of ability, integrity, and benevolence. In three mixed-method studies, we investigated how these components of trustworthiness were established by the coach asking inexperienced (N-1 = 42) and experienced (N-2 = 29) coaches as well as clients (N-3 = 24). An inductive qualitative content analysis revealed a range of approaches to establish trustworthiness that varied depending on the coach's experience: Inexperienced coaches (Study 1) and clients of inexperienced coaches (Study 3) focused most on the coach's ability, whereas experienced coaches (Study 2) focused most on the coach's benevolence. As the client's autonomy need is important in coaching, questions about the need (Study 2) and its fulfilment (Study 3) were added and it was hypothesised that communicating benevolence is autonomy need supportive. The results revealed that when a coach perceived a higher client autonomy need they focused more on communicating benevolence (Study 2). In accordance, when the client reported that the coach communicated more benevolence they felt more autonomy need fulfilment (Study 3). Thus, communicating benevolence can support the client's autonomy need.