Abstract
Orientation: This article focuses on the contemporary ethical challenges in coaching psychology in the South African context.Research purpose: The primary objective was to qualitatively explore the contemporary ethical challenges faced by coaching psychologists when coaching clients and organisations and develop an exploratory framework of ethical challenges.Motivation for the study: There may not be sufficient practical guidance to resolving the ethical challenges coaching psychologists encounter when coaching clients within organisations.In addition, available codes of ethics may not fundamentally cover all important ethical challenges, particularly in the South African context.Research approach, design and method: An interpretative paradigm with an explorative approach was applied. Semi-structured interviews and the Delphi technique were used to gather data from 16 participants who were purposively selected: six coaching psychologists were interviewed, whilst feedback from 10 expert panel members was obtained using the Delphi technique. The data was analysed using thematic analysis.Main findings: The findings point to a number of common ethical challenges in coaching psychology, as well as the typical ethical principles used by psychologists who coach as a guide to best ethical practice. The exploratory framework represents the broad systemic outline of factors that contribute to the ethical challenges and articulates these from the coach’s, coachee’s and organisation’s perspective.Practical/managerial implications: The framework can be applied by professionals and coaching clients and can be utilised proactively in identifying potential ethical challenges in the coaching relationship.Contribution/value-add: The framework identifies ethical principles that could be used as the foundation for a code of ethics in coaching psychology.
Highlights
Over the past 10 years, coaching has attracted considerable media coverage, both as a potential career and as a means of personal and professional development, and has drawn the attention of individuals as well as organisations (Grant, Passmore, Cavanagh & Parker, 2010)
This research study focused on the field of coaching psychology, which is characterised by a complexity of ethical challenges that have multiple influences on one another
The findings address and articulate all ethical challenges as perceived by the South African coaching psychologists who participated in the study
Summary
Over the past 10 years, coaching has attracted considerable media coverage, both as a potential career and as a means of personal and professional development, and has drawn the attention of individuals as well as organisations (Grant, Passmore, Cavanagh & Parker, 2010). The majority of the participants (P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5) were of the opinion that their training as a psychologist provided them with a greater understanding of human behaviour and ethics They were of the opinion that having a background in psychology provides coaches with a thorough foundation of all the necessary and relevant theoretical frameworks that they may make use of in the coaching process: ‘I am personally biased ... That trained psychologists make the best coaches’ (P3) This refers to the affiliation ‘between the coach, the coachee and organisation or the referring party’ (P1) and appeared to be the most common theme amongst the participants (P1– P6). It is evident that a wide range of methodological approaches and educational disciplines could potentially inform the practice of coaching, which, as the participants suggested, may result in a wide range of ethical challenges:
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