Ralph Coverdale

Ralph Coverdale (1918–1975) was a British soldier, psychologist and business consultant. He established The Coverdale Organization and the Coverdale Training method. He has been credited as a founder of coaching as a business practice in British industry.

Coverdale worked for years with experimental psychologist Bernard Babington Smith to develop the Coverdale Training method, a method of learning through action—later termed 'action learning' or 'inductive learning'.

In 1955 he joined the Steel Company of Wales as an Executive Development Officer and started his work on what would later become the Coverdale Training method.

Views Coverdale and Smith believed that business-minded thinking and management were skills that could be developed. This challenged the orthodox view at the time that believed that people had fixed skill sets and an unchangeable IQ.

Coverdale also viewed that cooperation and mutual benefit was more productive than conflict and competition. His training approach reflected this, asserting that skills were not taught like knowledge but instead learned from experience.