Defining duty of care in coaching is complex and challenging, yet it is very much needed, says Benita Mayhead
To date, duty of care hasn’t been clearly defined in coaching, unlike in other related professions.
Coaches are agents of change and have a responsibility to those involved in the coaching relationship (Mayhead, 2022). For those working in coaching, it’s essential we have a definition of duty of care and a conception of how it works in practice.
Duty of care in its legal form relates to an obligation imposed on someone to not cause foreseeable harm to others. Although coaches don’t have specific laws relating just to coaching, they’re required to adhere to the general law of civil liability, the law of tort (Mitchels & Bond, 2010), which encompasses duty of care. Duty of care includes both ethical and legal dimensions in professional contexts and is part of the ethical framework of conduct concerned with how individuals act in relation to promoting the welfare of others (Brennan & Wildflower, 2018).
It’s omnipresent, involving all interactions of the coach, legally and ethically, and is associated with one’s own sense of what is fair and right, connected to an individual’s principles of behaviour (Iordanou, Hawley, & Iordanou, 2017). It covers the protection of a practitioner and their clients, morality in relation to others, safeguarding of a practitioner and others, and doing no harm to oneself or to others (Torda, 2005; Bond, 2015; Caplan & Parent, 2017).
Indeed, codes of ethics from related psychology-based professions, medicine, and sport include the common themes of doing no harm to others, acting in ways that promote the welfare of others through a duty of care, the practitioner to work within their scope of competence, and to respect the interests of the client and the law (Brennan & Wildflower, 2018). Related fields have “gradually created a consensus of morally acceptable behaviour that transcends professional activities and encompasses all aspects of human interaction” (Iordanou et al., 2017, p.19), more developed in their understanding of duty of care than we are in coaching.
In counselling, duty of care is described as a “legal term for a personal or social responsibility to someone that forms the basis for liability in negligence when not fulfilled” (Bond, 2015, p.306). Furthermore, in some circumstances, not only is duty of care owed to those in a contractual relationship, but it can be owed to third parties (Mitchels & Bond, 2010), as can also be the case in sports coaching (Partington, 2021). In sports coaching, the premise exists that the coach owes a duty of care to those who are under their charge (Partington, 2016). It’s the duty of a sports coach to “exercise reasonable skill and care to ensure that those under the coach’s charge are not exposed to unreasonable or unacceptable risk” (Partington, 2016, p.45).
Duty of care has different meanings in nursing, dependent on whether it relates to a legal duty of care or to a professional duty of care (Royal College of Nursing, 2020). Discharging a legal duty of care requires nursing practitioners to act in accordance with the relevant standard of care. Discharging a professional duty of care requires the nursing practitioner to follow codes and guidance policy.
Our own coaching bodies’ codes of ethics encompass duty of care, but not explicitly, nor do they define it. It’s evident that duty of care is complex, and rarely defined, as Bond (2015) highlights. While challenging to define, having a clear definition for coaches and those working with coaches, is fundamentally important for the support of ethical practice and expectations of clients, organisations, and coaches. Drawn from empirical research based on semi-structured interviews with 30 participants (Mayhead, 2022), a new definition for coaching has been developed:
Duty of care is a moral and legal obligation for the coach to not cause foreseeable harm to those in the coaching relationship. Duty of care encompasses the coach’s adherence to a standard of reasonable care and forms part of the ethical framework of conduct. This informs how the coach acts in relation to promoting the welfare of those in the coaching relationship including the client/coachee and the customer/sponsoring organisation. Duty of care involves enactment of care through the coach setting and maintaining limits and boundaries between ethically acceptable and unacceptable influence.
This definition highlights the moral and legal obligation of the coach and draws attention to how the coach must not cause foreseeable harm to those who are in the coaching relationship.
Those who are in the coaching relationship include the coach, the client whom the coach is coaching, and the client’s organisation, and it may include others. It’s for the coach to assess with care who the parties are, and to act accordingly to ensure the welfare of those involved in the coaching relationship is promoted.
The definition foregrounds how the coach is expected to set and maintain the limits to the work they are conducting, and to manage the boundaries in the coaching relationship. The coach is the custodian of setting the limits and boundary management, and it’s their responsibility to do this by assessing what is ethically acceptable and unacceptable influence, and to act accordingly. Boundary management includes contracting, re-contracting and endings of coaching engagements.
The coaching industry has grown exponentially and is set to continue to do so. As coaching is recognised as a practice that helps people, it is of importance to gain greater understanding of coaches’ duty of care in relation to their roles. No definition can encompass all aspects of the complexity of duty of care – perhaps why it’s rarely defined.
The definition here invites us to pause and avoid moving further away from intellectual foundations, through reflecting and exploring our own understanding of duty of care in coaching. The definition is offered as a support for coaches and supervisors in their development and understanding of their roles.
References
- T Bond, Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action (4th edn.), SAGE, 2015
- D Brennan & L Wildflower, ‘Ethics in Coaching’, in E Cox, T Bachkirova, & D Clutterbuck (eds.), The Complete Handbook of Coaching (3rd edn.), SAGE, pp500-517, 2018
- A Caplan & B Parent (eds.), The Ethics of Sport: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press, 2017
- I Iordanou, R Hawley, & C Iordanou, Values and Ethics in Coaching, SAGE, 2017
- B Mayhead, Duty of care in coaching: from ethical frameworks to the development of the coach. Doctoral dissertation, Oxford Brookes University, 2022
- B Mitchels & T Bond, Essential law for counsellors and psychotherapists, SAGE, 2010
- N Partington, Modern sports coaching and the law: analysing, clarifying and minimising negligence liability. Doctoral dissertation, Queen’s University Belfast, 2016
- Royal College of Nursing (2020). Available at https://www.rcn.org.uk/get-help/rcn-advice/duty-of-care [Accessed 5 August 2022]
- A Torda, How far does a doctor’s ‘duty of care’ go?, in Internal Medicine Journal, 35(5), 295-296, 2005
About the author
- Dr Benita Mayhead is an executive coach and coach supervisor, and a founder of North-52 Limited