Ethical Coaching: A Case Study

Introduction Ethics is an integral part of coaching. John Wooden (2001) reflected that knowing you did the very best that you could gives self-satisfaction. He also said don’t try to be better than someone else. How does this fit into coaching and ethics? Simply because ethics is necessary to successfully coach someone; additionally, coaching is about helping someone to do the best they can with the situation, challenge, or job at hand.
Why should ethical considerations be a part of the coaching process?

Ethical considerations should be a part of the coaching process because they keep everyone involved inside a safe zone (Masson n.d). Both the coach and coachee must be assured that they will not feel threatened or uncomfortable. Being ethical

Leading by example, I will show the organization how to be an ethical coach (Vizzini 2014). In a way, I will be illustrating Wooden’s words, “The end game is a by-product of the journey to get there” (Wooden 2001). Using ethics in coaching, as in sports, gives people the satisfaction of doing the best you can with the tools you have. Using ethical coaching in my organization will consist of training the coaches. As Vizzini (2014) pointed out, besides leading by example, there are other ways to get the ethical point across. Finding teachable moments, explaining self-discipline and how to incorporate it into your daily routine as well as coaching work, as well as impressing the fact that a coach is a role model, this will help coaches to improve their techniques. Even with ethical coaching as the backdrop, there will be times when the coachee and the coach will not have a clear-cut way to a solution. These “gray areas” (Vizzini 2014) can be difficult to navigate. Yet ethics will help so much as they do not tell people what to do, they are just guidelines. Staying honest and giving the coachee choices, along with keeping best interests in mind will help to come up with a few selections. Challenge the coachee to come up with answers of his/her

47). I was honest and challenged her to view the situation from the employee’s eyes. I tried to get her to look at it from another point of view. And although this was only about CTO time, I felt like I helped the manager, and looking back I was also honest and ethical.
Conclusion
My takeaway from this class, especially in my personal situation, is that sometimes you need to have a more delicate method when discussing a touchy subject. As Blakely and Day (2012) asserted, I was self-centered and provided high challenge and low support (p. 18). This made for a very hostile and defensive conversation that quickly turned into a fight. I will not do that again, I will certainly use some of the things I have learned here to make this a more informative, respectful discussion. There are different ways to get to the ZOUD and they should all start with being ethical in a coaching situation. Listening to John Wooden talk about his coaching days, while seemingly not related, became clearer as I continued to the end. He sounded charmingly old-fashioned, yet I could hear that he was ethical and honest, seemingly in all aspects of his work. It was refreshing and while it sounded outdated, it should be how everyone deals with