The Roundtable working towards Race Equity in the Coaching Profession, hosted by Coaching at Work, is urging coaching, mentoring and supervision providers to step up efforts around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB).
Released to coincide with the UK’s Race Equality Week (6-12 February 2023), the Roundtable has issued an open letter to providers, signed by six professional coaching and coach supervision bodies, Coaching at Work and one individual (see box). Race Equality Week is an annual UK-wide initiative to address the barriers to race equality in the workplace.
The open letter encourages coaching, mentoring and supervision training, education and qualification providers to review progress towards their organisation’s DEIB targets, including training and development about DEIB, to raise awareness around DEIB through substantive learning content, and start thinking about how they can embed DEIB across the business, including in all training and development.
Other bodies represented at the Roundtable are the Association for Coaching (AC) and the British Psychological Society’s Division of Coaching Psychology (BPS DoCP).
Coaching at Work organised the first Roundtable towards Race Equity in the Coaching Profession in September 2021, gathering representatives from leading professional coaching bodies to explore collaboration and share learning, as part of wider DEIB initiatives.
In the open letter, Roundtable signatory members state:
“We’ve noticed and experienced that we all have a way to go to improve how we talk about and address race-related issues within our profession. Doing so is certainly not just a nice-to-have. Indeed, we believe that DEIB directly impacts how we serve and support our clients, including how we address national legal requirements, build awareness of bias, foster psychological safety in the coaching relationship, and build our own capacity to process our own experiences of discrimination as the discriminator and discriminated through self-awareness and the psychology of inclusion.”
The Roundtable is also working on a ‘Charter Against Racism’ in coaching, mentoring and supervision.
The Roundtable is hosting a free, online webinar about the open letter, on Thursday 23 March, 9.00-10.00 (UK time). Book: http://bit.ly/41BeBpt
Open letter: https://bit.ly/3EEhFaS
The signatories
- Association of Coaching Supervisors (AoCS): Felicia Lauw (global voice for diversity and inclusion)
- Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS): Will James (director of inclusion and sustainability)
- Coaching at Work: Liz Hall (editor)
- Coaches and Mentors of South Africa (COMENSA): Mokadi Mathye (president) and Ashnee Naidoo (chair, social ethics committee)
- European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC UK): Rachael Hanley-Browne (president) and Hande Yasargil (director of diversity and inclusion)
- UK International Coaching Federation (UK ICF): Lise Bruynhooghe (president) and Henriane Mourgue d’Algue (lead on inclusion and belonging)
- International Society for Coaching Psychology (ISCP): Angela Puri (equality, diversity and inclusion lead)
- Sile Walsh (as an individual), committee member at The Psychological Society of Ireland’s Coaching Psychology Special Interest Group in Coaching Psychology