Coaches face moral decisions every day, yet within these dilemmas lies the path to coaching excellence. Janet Laffin and Stephanie Sturges, senior lecturers at Sheffield Hallam Business School, explain why
Coaching ethics focuses on the principles and values that affect how we conduct ourselves and make decisions in our coaching.
Ethical dilemmas are an everyday occurrence in coaching. They often happen because of a misalignment between the client’s and the organisation’s agendas, particularly when it comes to showing evidence of return on investment.
For instance, the client wants to be coached into another organisation, however the sponsor wants the individual to stay. Maybe the client wants to explore his development needs, but the organisation wants the coach to report on their suitability for future positions. Perhaps the coach/manager wants to delegate greater responsibility to his report so he can develop new skills, but he needs to meet demanding targets and this means relying on team members (Hawkins & Smith, 2006).
Issues for the coach include: who is the client, what to disclose, conflicts of loyalties and interests, how to maintain trust and confidentiality while managing the boundaries and respecting the client’s privacy.
Coaches aim to resolve these dilemmas in advance, but they often have to establish working arrangements as they go along, leading to tension.
Peltier (2001) advises a two-pronged approach: direct and explicit discussions with all stakeholders, and the coach’s involvement in establishing consensus norms/codes of conduct through discussions in industry journals and the various coaching bodies and associations.
Developing standards
To handle the complexity of the ethical dilemmas in the coaching process, the coach can adhere to a recognised code of conduct. Although there is still no agreed single code (Lane, 2011), standards are in development. For example, the statement of shared professional values agreed by professional bodies in the UK in 2008, with the overarching principle that “every coach needs to abide by a code of governing ethics and apply acknowledged standards to the performance of their coaching work” (UK ICF, 2008).
There is still concern among buyers of coaching services about standards of practice (Lane, 2011). Also, Berglas (2002), Peltier (2001) and Sherman and Freas (2004), outline the risks to the client and the profession of unethical, unprofessional and unregulated coaching practice.
The main coaching associations and bodies met in Dublin in 2008 to produce common principles (Reputation, Continuous Competence Enhancement, Client-centred, Confidentiality and Standards) to guide the coach in his search for ethical competence and maturity.
Ethical maturity requires courage and self-awareness and involves the coach “having the reflective, rational and emotional capacity to decide what is right and/or wrong, having the courage to do it, and being accountable ethically for the decision”, (Carroll, 2009). It can be achieved proactively by identifying the beliefs, values and norms of our interactions with our clients and applying these in principle as well as in the spirit of our coaching practice.
“The search for excellence, whatever it may be, begins with ethics,” (Robert Solomon, 1997, p222, cited Peltier, 2001).
References
- S Berglas, “The very real dangers of executive coaching”, in Harvard Business Review, June 2002
- M Carroll, Ethical maturity presentation to CSTD and Bath Consultancy Graduate group, Bath, 2009 (www.bathconsultancygroup.com)
- B Peltier, The Psychology of Executive Coaching, New York, Routledge, 2001
- P Hawkins and N Smith, Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy, Berkshire, McGraw-Hill (OUP), 2006
- D Lane, chapter 7: “Ethics and professional standards in supervision”, in Coaching & Mentoring Supervision: Theory and Practice, T Bachkirova, P Jackson and D Clutterbuck (Eds), Berkshire, McGraw-Hill (OUP), 2011
- J Passmore (Ed), Supervision in Coaching – Supervision, Ethics and Continuous Professional Development, Association for Coaching, 2011
- S Sherman and A Freas, “The Wild West of executive coaching”, in Harvard Business Review, November 2004
Coaching at Work, Volume 7, Issue 1