How do we trust and govern coaching? This discussion paper from sponsors in the Coaching at Work-led Accreditation Forum, offers their perspective on the potential issues surrounding professional coaching standards from an organisational viewpoint
Over the past few years there has been a proliferation in the use of the term ‘coach’. It is now attached to many things of variable focus and, often, quality. Here, we examine coaching in the business environment. What are the key issues and how should professional coaching standards develop in relation to sponsors’ potential requirements? We seek to prompt further discussion rather than present a conclusion.
Driving force
What do we mean when we talk about coaching in an organisational context? We often come across types of coaching, such as development, career, leadership and executive. What do they all mean and at what point do we begin to apply professional standards to them?
There are many valid forms of coaching in organisations that use fundamental coaching skills to enhance and develop performance and bring out potential. These may be labelled performance, development or career coaching. Or they may be seen as a core part of a manager’s role, be this on-the-job skills coaching, performance management or development planning. We often hear of organisations wanting to adopt a coaching style of management or develop a coaching culture.
The aim of creating clear professional standards would not be to remove the role or need for the variety of coaching activities that exist in organisations, but to clarify the standards and governance of those who claim the role – professional executive coach.
An issue of trust
There are a number of ongoing business, talent and leadership development trends influencing the world of coaching. The trend towards globalisation and issues of trust in society are already having an impact on the way organisations view leadership and identify and develop talent and leaders. These trends are likely to increase in significance.
If the coaching industry is to play an effective part in this space, it has to have a global perspective and be able to speak to a global audience. After all, how is the coaching industry itself to be trusted, if it does not have a unifying set of principles and standards within which to operate?
As coaching becomes embedded in organisations, we notice that many of the early adopters have been those with a strong ‘professional’ culture arising from the significant employment of long-standing chartered professionals, such as engineers, accountants, lawyers and doctors. It is in these contexts, in particular, that we see starting to emerge a conversation about what is unique and special about professional coaching as opposed to the coaching done by line managers or in-house mentors.
Alongside this, within the executive coaching community, we are having our own conversations about whether we want, or are ready for, full chartered professional status.
Our recent discussions at the Accreditation Forum have led us to wonder how much time is left for us to have these conversations before coaching is absorbed into the field of general management or people development skills. We have also been reflecting that a robust body of knowledge is central to any clear and distinct professional status, chartered or not.
Herein lies one of the core dilemmas. Coaches are magpies, borrowing from many other disciplines. While we have a few university centres providing education, we still see very few significant investments, whether by society or business, into coaching research and enquiry. It will take a long time to develop a discipline, even a multi-disciplinary one, off the back of Masters-level research. In being a hybrid, we maintain openness and innovation. However, in not providing a focus, we don’t engage in the level of research that would be needed to establish a coaching body of knowledge.
It could be argued that without this, we risk losing the opportunity to create a sustainable place for coaching in organisations and a sustainable business platform for professional, executive coaches.
Community
The question of which community we serve is an interesting one.
The evolution of the coaching industry has been based on inclusive values. Increasingly, we see the coaching professional bodies focusing on the organisational contexts of coaching and the executive coach practice. The question of what we mean by executive coaches is of itself contentious – is it just coaching at a certain level (what level), on business and leadership? If we can settle on executive coaching to mean those coaches who operate in a business context working with senior people, then perhaps, executive coaching can:
- become a recognised discipline (requiring both psychological and business understanding)
- have a clear path for entry and development to it as a profession
- have a governance structure with ‘teeth’.
However, if we want to include a less hierarchical series of uses for coaching, for example, coaching for service or process improvement, where coaching is a core skill as part of Lean Process change, then the label of executive will not be inclusive enough for the profession.
It becomes clear then, that from an organisational perspective, it is worth exploring further when a professional coach is required. What do we want to ask a professional coach to do that is different from what a really excellent manager or leader would do? If we think of a profession as necessarily differentiated from an allied craft, nurse from health care assistant, for example, or accountant from book-keeper, then we can see that we have yet to spell out what that looks like in coaching and that we are not crystal-clear on where we draw the ‘profession’ line.
As coaching practitioners and as a community of buyers and sponsors of coaching within organisations, we need a consistent language to differentiate the very valuable coaching that can go on day to day, from the more specialist and ‘professionally’ bounded coaching that qualified, supervised practitioners do within a code of ethics.
Accountability
While executive coaching is often focused on the individual client, it is predominantly paid for and is also in service of the organisation and wider business system. We need to ask ourselves whether our current governance systems and structures, both within organisations and as an industry:
- protect the individual client by enforcing the safe standards of practice espoused by the accrediting bodies
- give the organisational client assurance that their investment is protected by consistency and standards
- are transferable across cultures and can serve the needs of global organisations
- protect the professional identity and brand of executive coaches
- enable the profession to have a voice in wider societal issues (for example, speaking to the question first posed by Peter Hawkins, “Where were all the coaches when the banking crisis was happening?”
- are supporting the development of a sustainable area of practice via development of a coherent body of knowledge and research effort.
So a number of questions are left before us (see box, ‘Key questions, on page 48).
We will all have different, even conflicting, views depending on where we sit within the coaching world, what interests we are concerned with and how vulnerable we feel in that position.
Where do we go from here? We continue the conversation and start by drawing all parties to it, and not just having it within our existing safe communities. The challenge before us is to take the best of coaching’s naturally inclusive thinking and add a good dose of critical thinking – but not so much that we kill the patient. It will be hard for coaching to be discriminating – as any exclusive club needs to be – while also holding to a value of acceptance and inclusion, but that is the kind of both/and thinking we must do.
Perhaps we aren’t only asking if coaching can develop into a profession and potentially gain chartered status, but what ‘professional’ means and needs to offer society in a modern 21st century framework, rather than simply taking on the assumptions and drivers of a 19th century one.
We should, however, keep in mind George Bernard Shaw’s dictum that: “All professions are conspiracies against the laity.” n
Key questions
Ask yourself:
- What are the boundaries of this professional executive coach role? What distinguishes it from other coaching activity in organisations? Is coaching something you do (an activity), something you inhabit (a style and way of being in the world), or something you are (a clear role that others acknowledge, that exists beyond the moment of practice?)
This seems crucial to address early and can only be addressed in conversation with organisations shaping the coaching offers in their business.
- What is the future of coaching? What forces will shape it? Whose needs are we meeting?
- What would be the body of knowledge and recognised discipline on which this ‘profession/professional practice’ would rest?
- How do we engage business and academia in the potential for significant critical enquiry and research into coaching philosophy, practice and results?
- What model of governance will support us in creating a sustainable place for ‘professional coaching’ in organisations and society? Is it a register, chartered status or something else?
What do you think?
Louise Buckle (lead coach at KPMG) and Maria Symeon (global and UK coaching leader at PwC) have written this discussion paper following consultation with other sponsors forming part of the Coaching at Work-led Accreditation Forum.
Other members include: News UK, Kent County Council, GSK and Network Rail, the leading coaching professional bodies and a representative of the Coaching Bodies Round Table.
What do you think? A discussion thread will be posted on Coaching at Work’s LinkedIn group. Or you can email Liz Hall at: liz@coaching-at-work.com
About the Accreditation Forum
The Accreditation Forum was set up and led by Coaching at Work in March 2012, gathering the leading professional coaching bodies and some coaching sponsors to explore and clarify requirements for accreditation by the differing bodies. This led to the production of comparison tables (bit.ly/1re8Dkv).
The dialogue has since been widened to address a number of other topics, including standards.