The ethical coaches' handbook - Chapter 16

Editors:

Wendy-Ann Smith, Jonathan Passmore, Eve Turner, Yi-Ling Lai & David Clutterbuck

Chapter 16: Positive ethical practice for coaching excellence and wellbeing

Authors: Annalise Roache, Aaron Jarden, Tayyab Rashid & Tim Lomas

Abstract

Ethics – perhaps the quintessential snooze button of coaching. Rarely is the topic, and indeed ethical mastery itself, embraced by practitioners. Instead, ethics is often viewed as a set of obligations and rules for what 'not to do'. However, here the authors assert that ethics is powerful and potential-filled, with the capacity to take a transformative approach to cultivate wellbeing and human flourishing. Building on timeworn tenets and embracing a recent move to a notion of 'Positive Ethics', is situated as an essential and potent footing from which helping professionals, in particular coaching practitioners can do good for themselves and their clients, peers and the planet. Humanity is at a point in time when a return to ethical guidance and practice is not just desirable; it is paramount. Readers will be taken on a brief historical journey of the dominant ethical branches and then move to a modern-day extension of Positive Ethics into that of Positive Ethical Practice (PEP), featuring five aims to guide ethical thinking and mastery. These aims are then built on through a vignette and practical exercises for application.?