Values and Ethics in Coaching

Ioanna Iordanou, Rachel Hawley, Christiana Iordanou

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473988057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Mentoring & Coaching

The first complete guide to exploring values and ethics in coaching, this book will guide you through the responsibilities of coaching practice, and help you recognize and reconcile common ethical dilemmas and choices.

Part I explores the theory and research underpinning ethical coaching practice, and invites you to examine own personal and professional values.

Part II delves into the key ethical considerations in the coaching relationship, including contracting, confidentiality and understanding boundaries. It explores each issue in depth, and offers implications and suggestions for practice.

Part III examines individual professional contexts, including coaching in business, sports and healthcare with real life examples and reflections from practising coaches.

This book is vital reading for trainee and practitioner coaches, and those looking to introduce ethical coaching practice into a professional setting.

Part I The Nature of Values and Ethics

1 What are Values and Ethics?

Chapter aims

• To explore the origins and meanings of the terms ‘values’ and ‘ethics’.
• To introduce ways in which personal values and ethics can impact on the coaching practice.
• To familiarise coaching trainees and coaches with the codes of ethics of professional coaching associations.
• To discuss and dispel the myth of a universally accepted ethical code of practice.

Chapter overview

In this chapter, we discuss the meaning of the words ‘values’ and ‘ethics’, offering a brief philosophical overview of the origins of these concepts. We then explore some of the key ethical issues that are relevant to the coaching practice. We place particular emphasis on the unregulated landscape in which coaching is situated and which is partly accountable for the lack of coherent ethical guidelines that could underpin the coaching profession. We also look at the distinct ethical codes that have been developed by prominent professional coaching bodies. We conclude the chapter by highlighting the significance of understanding your values and constantly reflecting on their impact on your development as a coach and your coaching practice.

Key words

values, ethics, ethical conduct, professional coaching associations

Introduction

In the course of your coaching training, practice and even accreditation, you will often come across phrases like ‘personal values’, ‘professional ethics’ and ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical’ practice. We like to think that most coaches ground their coaching practice on a set of values that aim to support clients in achieving their goals. Yet, it is inevitable that during our coaching practice, we will be placed in a position of having to make ethical decisions, wondering what is morally right or wrong. Such decisions will involve issues ranging from the gravely serious to the mundane. If you have developed a warm and trusting relationship with your client, for instance, would you consider having dinner with her after the coaching session? If your coaching client has revealed to you that she illegally claims benefits that she is not entitled to, do you report her? Or do you carry on coaching a client who shows clear signs of mental illness but does not wish to admit it and is keen to continue the coaching process?

Such ethical questions are central to coaching. In fact, they are central to any professional activity that involves supporting other people, in one way or another. This book will help you explore issues of values and ethics that you might face in your own coaching practice. It will do so by delving into the nuanced differences of the different applications of coaching. But, before we embark on this journey of exploration, we invite you to consider the meaning, your meaning, of the terms ‘values’ and ‘ethics’.

Pause for reflection

Take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions. You can even consider jotting down your answers:

• What is your own definition of the word ‘values’?
• What is your own definition of the word ‘ethics’?

What are values?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘values’ as: ‘principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life’. Values dictate what is actually important to us. Many a time they equip us with the drive and motivation to do something. Importantly, values determine how we feel after having taken a particular decision. Contrary to skills (which can be learnt and cultivated), values are inherent and, while they can be consciously explored, they cannot be easily altered.

The word ‘value’ has different meanings that are all grounded in basic personal preferences and choices of importance. From a numerical perspective, if you believe that the value of your car is £10,000, it means that you will preferably choose to exchange it for a sum of money only if it is equal to £10,000 or higher. From a personal perspective, when you say to a friend ‘I value your opinion’, it means that this friend’s opinion is important to you and that you choose to take it into consideration. From a cultural perspective, the priorities set within the community or society in which you live are bound to affect your choices. In a democratic state, for instance, personal freedom will take precedence over, say, rigid religious directives or social cohesion that might be more pronounced in other societies. The environment in which you are reared, be it family, school or the local community, will most probably have a strong influence on the values and the value system you adopt.

A value system is a set of personal and cultural values evolved and accepted by a person, community or society as a standard moral code that guides one’s behaviour. This set of values is not easily changeable and, at times, we can even define it using a specific term: ‘I am a socialist’, ‘I am a Christian’, ‘I am a European.’ For most of us, such beliefs and attitudes are imprinted in our inner being and dictate how we make decisions for what is morally right or wrong. In fact, they influence the way in which we think, judge and act, and shape our overall conduct in life. In other words, our value system shapes the identity we develop within a society. When we talk about ‘Christian values’, ‘American values’ or ‘working-class values’, we are talking not only about the values of an individual but also about the set of values shared by an entire community. Different circumstances and traditions will influence the diverse criteria that communities and cultures use to prescribe their preferences and choices.

Values in coaching

This plethora of culturally based values that can be held by an individual is bound to penetrate professional contexts, including that of coaching. Consider, for instance, the following scenarios:

• Due to unforeseen circumstances, you have been forced to reschedule an appointment with a client three times. You finally manage to agree on a specific day and time. But, then, your 8-year-old son informs you that his school’s play, in which he is participating, happens to be taking place on that particular day and time. Do you reschedule your appointment with your client yet again?
• An employee you directly line-manage has started to show clear signs of deteriorating performance due to a personal family crisis. Your own line manager suggests that you take the role of your employee’s coach in order to support her during this tremulous time. Do you accept?
• You are appointed as a coach in a high-profile organisation. Your responsibility is to coach managers who are facing the prospect of dismissal. The organisation’s human resources (HR) manager directly asks for your input as to who should be laid off. Do you offer your views?
• A good friend has decided that she needs coaching for personal and professional purposes. She knows that you are very successful in your job and asks you to be her coach. Do you consent? If so, do you charge a fee?

The choice you make in any of these scenarios will primarily depend on the set of consequences that are more preferable to you. In your view, is maintaining client satisfaction more important than your child’s play? Do you think that one should keep their personal and professional life separate? Is it your duty, as a coach, to determine who can succeed or fail in a professional context? Can someone assume the role of a good friend’s coach? If so, is it acceptable to charge money for the service provided? The course of action that you take to address such ethical dilemmas will be determined by your values. These may be either inherent or you have chosen to adopt them as part of a professional code of ethics.

Pause for reflection

Take some time to consider the scenarios listed above:

• What choice would you make?
• What personal values would you base your decision on?

As we have already ascertained, values are a set of personal principles that guide our behaviour and, by extension, our coaching practice. While you are reflecting on these hypothetical dilemmas, you may notice that values can, at times, be conflicting. You may feel, for instance, that your strong work ethics do not allow you to reschedule your appointment with your client but, as a parent, you feel that it’s your obligation to be present at your child’s play. Indeed, these are difficult decisions exactly because they involve balancing contrasting values. How we deal with such contrasting values and how we choose to make one set of values override another is something that we will keep coming back to in this book.

A brief philosophical overview of values

As we have already established, values are, in one way or another, associated with choice of action. They dictate not what we do but what we feel we ought to do. You see, you can always consider the positive and negative consequences of a situation before deciding on a course of action. But your sense of what you ought to do will help you determine which set of consequences you prefer. This observation takes us all the way back to the Scottish Enlightenment and one of its most prominent exponents, the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–76).

Contributions from philosophy: David Hume

In his A Treatise of Human Nature (2007 [1739]), David Hume attempted to explore the psychological basis of human nature and argued that feelings, rather than reason, dictate human behaviour. In stark contrast to the contemporaneous Cartesian notion of ‘I think, therefore I am’, Hume promulgated the view that: ‘Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason’ (ibid.: 458).

It follows that, for Hume, human beings are inherently more interested in how things ought to be, rather than what they actually are. Additionally, Hume saw no causal relationship between an ought and an is. He could not believe that what we ought to do derives from what we actually do (ibid.: 420). The question of how ought can be derived from is, also known as the ought-to problem or Hume’s Law, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory. For our purposes, what is important to take from Hume’s thinking is that, when it comes to making ethical decisions, what guides our actions is not what we know but how we feel about it.

How we feel about an action is influenced by the environment in which we are reared. This is made up of the society in which we are brought up and by the specific societal subgroups in which we take part. Such subgroups include gender, age group, ethnic or geographical community, occupational group, and political party and class, among others. Inevitably, we tend to subscribe to several of the values our society espouses. In other words, our values are shaped by what Michel Foucault termed ‘the regime of truth’ of our society.

Contributions from philosophy: Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault argued that: ‘every society has its own regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true’ (Foucault, 1980: 131). This ‘regime of truth’ will most probably influence the development of our value system.

These societal values tend to change and evolve, as we move from subgroup to subgroup. Have your political or religious values changed as you moved from one age group to another? Has the priority of your values altered if you have moved from one coun...