Christiana Iordanou and Ioanna Iordanou reflect on the ethical issues in team coaching and offer some practical guidelines on how to deal with them
Unlike in other helping professions, such as medicine and psychology, coaching continues to be practised without any formal regulatory safeguards.
Complying with any code of ethics is up to the individual coach’s discretion, while ethical standards of professional practice are primarily self-imposed (Iordanou, Hawley & Iordanou, 2017). The consequence of the seemingly lax attitude of the coaching industry towards formal regulatory processes that could safeguard the profession from dangerous, unethical practices, is that coaches are left to their own devices in dealing with ethical issues.
While coaches working one-to-one have been offered significant guidance (see Iordanou et al, 2017), team coaches are in pressing need of guidance with regard to ethical practice, especially when this takes place in organisational contexts.
Team coaching is rife with multifaceted ethical issues. We unpack some of these in this article.
One of the team coach’s primary responsibilities is to help build trust within the team. This is imperative, as without trust team coaching cannot succeed (Clutterbuck, 2018). Trust enables team members to feel safe, and safety enables them to work effectively towards achieving their goals, enhancing, as a consequence, their performance (Clutterbuck, 2007; Peters & Carr, 2013).
By prioritising and promoting trust within the team, the coach essentially helps safeguard the team’s welfare. To promote trust, the coach must be mindful of any dysfunctional group dynamics that may exist or develop within the team. Such dynamics are detrimental to team performance (Dassen, 2015), but team members are not always aware that their individual behaviours could manifest in ways detrimental to group cohesion.
One example is judging negatively the performance of a colleague as a way of hiding our own sense of inadequacy in a specific domain. Dysfunctional group dynamics, therefore, may hinder the performance of the team.
It’s the responsibility of the coach to be able to pick up on such dynamics and encourage the team to address them in a safe and trusting environment. This will help resolve any potential conflict within and between team members and sustain a collegial atmosphere, where members feel safe to express their thoughts, feelings and needs.
To allow such an atmosphere to develop, the team coach needs to inform the members of the team’s goals and expectations, and to establish clear boundaries (Iordanou et al, 2017). An attitude of this kind from the very outset of the coaching intervention will set the foundations for mutual respect to flourish between the coach and team members, as well as among the members themselves.
Moreover, as the team is a dynamic organism that may include individuals from different backgrounds, it’s important that the coach be conscious of her/his own ethics and values, as this might enable her/him to promote respect and acceptance towards diversity within the group (Iordanou et al, 2017).
Keep it confidential
Another ethical issue that emerges in team coaching is confidentiality. Confidentiality, along with trust, are the foundation of any successful team coaching relationship because they enable team members to feel reassured that shared experiences and information will stay within the team (Gyllensten & Palmer, 2007).
Several other ethical issues arise here for the team coach. How much relevant information can they conceal from the sponsoring organisation? What if the organisation requires that the coach discuss with management what happens during sessions? And importantly, what if confidentiality has to be breached (for example, when a member becomes verbally abusive or threatening towards other members)?
To be able to deal with these pertinent issues effectively, team coaches need not only appropriate training and experience of working with teams but also supervision where they can consciously reflect on and learn from ethical dilemmas emerging during the team coaching process (Iordanou et al, 2017).
Supportive atmosphere
Finally, another pertinent ethical issue that may arise within a team context is hostility towards the coach. If, for instance, coaching has been forced on the team, its members might view the coach as representative of an organisational imperative they disagree with. Any negative emotions towards the organisation may be projected on the coach, creating an unpleasant, even hostile atmosphere during the coaching sessions.
Research suggests the organisational culture may facilitate or hinder coaching initiatives (Gormley & Van Nieuwerburgh, 2014). Nevertheless, team coaches can turn around negative attitudes towards coaching (and the organisation) if they have a strong coaching mindset, focused on establishing trust and team psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999).
Specifically, if a coach can create a supportive atmosphere, where mishaps and mistakes are viewed as opportunities for new learning, dissuading team members from blaming each other, then team-coaching can be conducive to its developmental purpose (Smith, 2018).
So, what can team coaches do to ensure that they are aptly equipped to deal with the variety of ethical issues that emerge in team coaching? We recommend consciously developing and maintaining a common ethical mindset, capitalising on the ethical strategies we already have in place: contracting; regular supervision; continuing professional development; and, importantly, open and shared communication between colleagues and relevant shareholders, even inviting the input of clients.
In other words, we invite team coaches to bring and keep professional values and ethics to the forefront rather than the background of their coaching practice, and to promote a community of practice premised on sharing and learning from their experiences in a reflexive and respectful manner. By doing so, they can foster the collegial working environments they strive to create through their service.
About the authors
- Dr Christiana Iordanou is a lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Kent and co-author of Values and Ethics in Coaching (Sage, 2017)
- Dr Ioanna Iordanou is a senior lecturer in human resource management (coaching and mentoring) at Oxford Brookes Business School and co-author of Values and Ethics in Coaching
(Sage, 2017)
References
- D Clutterbuck, ‘Team coaching’, in Cox, E, Bachkirova, T and Clutterbuck, D (eds) The Complete Handbook of Coaching (3rd ed), London: SAGE, pp279-294, 2018
- M-C Dassen, ‘Drama techniques in team coaching’, in International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 13(1), 43-57, 2015
- A C Edmondson, ‘Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams’, in Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383, 1999
- H Gormley and C Van Nieuwerburgh, ‘Developing coaching cultures: a review of the literature’, in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 7(2), 90-101, 2014
- K Gyllensten and S Palmer, ‘The coaching relationship: an interpretative phenomenological analysis’, in International Coaching Psychology Review, (2)2,
169-177, 2007 - I Iordanou, R Hawley and C Iordanou, Values and Ethics in Coaching, London: SAGE, 2017
- J Peters and C Carr, High Performance Team Coaching: A Comprehensive System for Leaders and Coaches, Victoria, BC: Friesen Press, 2013
- S Smith, ‘Is it possible for managers to coach effectively in a hostile culture?’, in International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 12, 51-60, 2018