This article focuses on the analysis of the display, negotiation, and construction of competence and (professional) identity in a relatively young field of personal and professional development: coaching. Based on a corpus of German and English coaching sessions, the related study utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, combining ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, and discursive psychology. In the analysis of a first business coaching encounter between professional and client presented in this article, competence can be seen as part of the coach’s professional identity, as it is co-constructed on a moment-to-moment basis by both coach and client in and via their talk-in-interaction. While the membership categories of “coach” and “client” set the framework for the analysis, a more detailed description of the specific interactional activities of the two interactants is needed in order to get a grasp of the notions of competence and professional identity. For this analytical purpose, an extension of Zimmerman’s model of identity is suggested on the level of situated identities.
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