We talk a lot about the morality of leaders, but what about those who develop our leaders behind the scenes? Do we need ETHICAL COACHING?
It’s a little bit funny (or sad, depending on perspective) that today we have got a world full of “leadership development professionals” — from writers to business schools to HR to coaches to consultants — who often do not seem to have any profound understanding of ethics. (By the way — I do not mean “ethics of coaching”, i.e. how to responsibly take up the role of a coach, but the “ethics of Leadership”, that is how to be a responsible leader)
The beliefs and worldviews of the multi-coloured and pluri-vocal battalions of leadership reformers —who often present their purported wisdom with absolute conviction, fancy alliterations and clever formulas — reach from blatantly neoliberal to obscurely esoteric. Sadly, though, it seems they seldom invest sufficiently into any philosophical analysis to evaluate their own underlying morality, let alone investigate alternative options. Which of course begs the question how anyone who is not able or willing to fully qualify what constitutes “good acting” could possibly pretend to support leadership development?
Today the ability of large and global corporations to do harm (or good) is greater than ever. Hence, it is in all our interest to ensure that people in leadership roles are well equipped to face the increasingly complex challenges of modern business and society. Most critically, leaders whose roles come intrinsically with institutional power, must possess the capacity to wield that power wisely — based on a mature ethical stance. Such responsible leadership requires not only a different set of values or formal codes of conduct, but “epistemic fluency” — the “meta-cognitive” capacity to explore multiple worldviews at the same time. We need to be able to hold beliefs and paradigms “object” , critically examining our thinking and the intrinsic value judgments we are making, in order to determine the most appropriate morality and eventually embody a “good” course of action.
Hence, coaches engaged in leadership development must be able to support that cultivation of moral identity, emotions and character required of their entrusted leaders. Regrettably, we can never take others where we have not been ourselves — hence, maybe the time has come to insist that anyone in leadership development roles must first acquire a reasonable mastery of business ethics and moral education. Otherwise, paradoxically, many of our friends and colleagues in development practices might earnestly seek to do good, but could easily end up making things worse… by making bad leadership more successful.
The Discussion
On definitions of ethics: The problem might be that there seems to be an infinite number of ethics. Some time ago I opened a seminar with the question “What kind of ethics would you like?” A pin board full of cards was the “offer”. The demand was great, but in the end the helplessness was greater. — I think one should start with a basic ethical consensus, with the protection of the dignity of the person, the basic values of freedom, equality and solidarity, and then human rights. I suspect, however, that we will not be able to reach a consensus here.
Can we all settle on humanism? What about a transformational leadership approach centred on empowering others to reach their full potential and grounded in humanism. Plus, potentially adding feminist values of collaboration, compassion, courage, and equity — all underpinned by a moral compass that seeks to center marginalized voices and redistribute power.
- That is a very good suggestion! But we might need to define more precisely what exact ethics we would endorse. Humanism is a product of the enlightenment. Mainly, it suggests there is no God, that we should seek happiness in this life, and that human beings have the right, dignity and responsibility to shape their own lives, and support others in their respective striving for happiness. The belief is that individuals are intrinsically good, focus is on autonomy and free will, and ethical decision-making is based on reason (and a degree of Kantian deontology), as well as empathy and compassion for others. Humanistic psychology (eg Maslow) picks up this focus on individual self-actualisation: the strong idea of a self, capable of growth, responsible for what one becomes, and capable of influencing social progress. Feminism as a “materialist ethics” seeks to correct gender inequalities esp. in terms of power, privilege, or limited access to social goods. Feminism often takes a non-deontological stance so there is some tension. However, I personally think this is compelling foundation.
- That said, it is important to consider that humanism has often been criticised for its atheism and innate rationality (and the lack of a positive “telos” or vision needed to offer deeper meaning in our postmodern world), its elitism (ignoring real-life differences between people), anthropocentrism and especially its individualism. Early (marxist) critics rejected the notion of an autonomous self, emphasizing the determination of macro socioeconomic forces on the shaping of any individual. They argued that human nature is human only by virtue of the society. Later postmodernist critics, like Foucault, would then deny any foundational, universal or normative assumptions about our nature and reject any notion of a self or self-actualization. Opposing what he calls the “California cult of the self,” Foucault denies individual freedom and views the humanistic individual as only a consequence of practices of power. Beliefs about “masculinity” or “femininity” also reflect power relationships in reality. Responsibility in its humanistic sense drops from the vocabulary, being one of the practices of power that creates individuals and humanistic truth-dangerous illusions. So there is a lot to consider…
- Whilst I believe the criticism of humanism can partly be overcome by qualifying individuality vs individualism, there remains a lack of relevance of community and social order, a certain naivety vis-a-vis different capabilities of people and the relevance of power and context, as much as a need for a more eco-centric orientation. In addition, people often point to the lack of its impact: humanism as a theory is very vaguely defined, and as a movement had few important achievements. Hence, here the question is how to operationalise it in the role and characteristics of the leader, the purpose, culture and configuration of the organisation (including structure, decision-making rules, governance etc), and the relationship between economy and society…
On changing ethics: Ethics has been subject to evolution too. We must define ethics first. I did by defining a set of 5 core natural human values as shared responsibility for sustainable human resilience and progress.
- Undoubtedly there’s continuous evolution! Utilitarians will suggest net improvement on utility (where collective utility is an aggregate), deontologists will insist on human rights and golden rules, nihilists will suggest non interference and all-oneness, religious folk will have another view… So I guess indeed our collective challenge is to define morality and then operationalize it — where potentially the way is as important as the result… (pointing towards dialogic ethics — see Habermas)
On language: An underlying problem is that ethics in business is often described in terms of negatives. In other words, it is what not to do, what is unethical, where behaviours show a lack of integrity. Leaders need to inform and influence their organisations by showing and describing what good looks like: what to do, what ethics means for the organisation, rewarding integrity at every opportunity.
On ideology: at the end of the day everyone likes to entertain the thought that they are ethical, no matter where they are in the space spanned by pinpointing “neoliberal” and “esoteric”. And there might be even more qualifiers for this space, e.g. “western”, “asian”, “techy”, “green”.
a lot of toes to step on … Hence the discourse regarding this issue may need to have more facilitation than is given on a social medium like linkedin. what would be your suggestion to that ?
- That is my thinking as well! So far I can only offer three thoughts: firstly, it so happens that the community we are engaging with here includes many coaches — and even more so, many leaders of coaching initatives, schools or foundations. My hope is that they will directly address the issue in their respective programmes — and I know some on them already do. Secondly, I think we can potentially offer some support for interested parties by exposing them to thoughts about ethics (eg with our webcasts) or even by developing a recommended approach to (coaching) ethics — this is something we are pondering about. Thirdly, in spite of my concerns about institutional interventions, I believe we might want to see professionalisation of leadership education. So maybe some sort of qualification or certification is required — but it cannot be a tick in the box exercise.
On Transcending performance coaching: Todays profound changes urgently call for a repositioning of our companies, organizations and institutions towards new models that create positive impacts, where we all have a clear ethical compass. We are called to a profound paradigm shift, in our relationship with the living, around us and with ourselves. All this can only happen when men and women in charge decide to reposition themselves. We as coaches must also reposition ourselves to be able to support these women and men. The question of consciousness and ethics, individual and collective, is at the heart of the major transition of civilization that we are experiencing, absolutely. This opens the question of “coaching with intention” : is it alright ? My answer is yes. Coaching for performance belongs to the XXth century.
On bringing ethics more into the open: Many concepts in the coaching and leadership space are actually all about ethics. But it is hidden under layers and that is where things can go wrong.
- I do agree. Yet, I will argue sometimes the basic tools are missing to make sense of and qualify the morality of our interventions. Most coaches have a therapeutic lens — however the very idea that “coaching is not advice” and reminiscences of Freud’s “talking cure” make us often either insist on a glorified “neutral” observer position, or jump into “performance coaching”. The epistemology of the former seems (transcendentalist) phenomenological, the latter utilitarian — and neither imply a clear concept of moral development. I reckon what we need is something in between — a “grand theory” of practical wisdom that ensures a capacity for ethical reflection in leadership judgment, rather than the intellectual innocence (and sometimes hypocrisy) of a growth model based only on increasing self consciousness
Can we simply choose the right coaches to make our organisation good? Thats an interesting question you are raising Otti! By chosing a leadership coach doesn’t the company/leader therefore also choose the ethics he wants (the company) to move towards?
- That is an interesting thought and occasionally I believe that is very true! It would, however, in general require: a) the coach to have a very clear and ideally coherent ethical stance (on leadership ethics), b) transparency about that ethical orientation of the coach, c) clarity about how to discern different “ethical orientations” and thus the ability to pick on the side of the recruiter, d) the person choosing the coach to fully understand what “ethics the company wants” (as a whole), e) the choice of ethics being an important criterion of selection etc
- Sadly, I think all of these preconditions are a hard nut to crack… ;-). However, I will argue here that it all starts with (a). Most coaches I think would struggle to clearly discern and defend their ethical convictions vis-a-vis a range of options, on a number of relevant dimensions — and to be clear about how to operationalise the chosen theory in terms of moral leadership education. And I am not saying it is easy — far from it. My question is whether leadership is not too important a subject to allow the “uninitiated” to go near it without sufficient training…
Maybe just a question of incentives, rather than coaching: It is absolutely evident we need ethics to permeate all leaders’ actions now more than ever. Not sure “mandatory training” is the answer, though. I think we need the right kind of incentives.
- Thanks for chiming in! I have no clear answers, I fear, but you might find some of the research into incentives as troublesome as I do. There is clear evidence that incentives — as much as (compliance) rules, often crowd out the very predisposition of an actor to act ethically. Hence, there I reckon Friedman was right: we must ensure that any intervention doesn’t turn out to create more harm than the phenomenon it seeks to mitigate!
Is it all about system thinking? I might be wrong, but my belief is that ethics can only be achieved from a “meta-cognition” level such as systemic thinking. Not from a reductionist & mechanical way that many leaders are biased towards — as a consequence of the old school that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”
- Great point! I also do believe meta cognition is one aspect of the puzzle — our ability to step into different “paradigms”. However, system thinking arguably is only one of those paradigms rather than itself an integrator of paradigms. At least in the way it is often discussed, ie as a rational socio-technical theory. Moreover, in “wisdom” research there is growing acknowledgment for the role not only of cognition but also aesthetics and emotions — that is where “axiology” comprises both ethics and aesthetics: we often can “see the beauty of good” without analysing it. I think in the end there is some insight everywhere — in the “old school way of thinking”, in the “new schools”, and above all if we combine all those cognitive sense-making schemes with love, caring, compassion and a willingness to serve the common good… ;-)
On developing the good society together: The final words in Coaching and Mentoring a critical text (Western 2012 Sage) are: “If enough coaching practitioners claim an ethical stance, and work with individuals and organizations towards a progressive and emancipatory agenda, then coaching will become a virtuous vocation. Coaches can help create the network of leaders, in all walks of life, that will resist destructive and oppressive tendencies, and work towards creating the ‘good society’.” The Analytic-Network Coach Training focuses on the purpose of ‘coaching leaders to act in good faith to create the good society’ https://bit.ly/3fLzgkc. However, the book suggests that mandatory regulations and qualifications are no guarantee of quality or ethical practice. High quality training, supervision, ongoing communities of practice, focusing on ethics and connectivity, will be the only way to deliver this. The main challenge is that coaching has a tunnel vision focus on improving individual performance which makes it part of the problem. Coaches are part of the ecosystem and must contribute ethically to it.
- I fully agree and share your suspicion towards qualifications. Yet, I think we should include in any comprehensive (leadership) coaching a module that deals with moral philosophy. If today we asked any of the coaches out there what morality is, what it means for the content (not the delivery) of their coaching and how its success is evaluated — I am pretty sure we would get… lets say it diplomatically… a most wonderful confabulation of highly eclectic positions… And that clearly is not enough if we followed the recommendations above… In addition, and here I am on very thin ice, I have a sense that many of the coaches and consultants out there unwittingly and unconsciously are embracing a rather individualistic ideology and understanding of self — which could be a natural consequence of being self-entrepreneurs or quasi therapists. That could contravene a “task” of developing morality which always also implies an idea of societal good order. But as I said, i am on THIN ice…
On turning into action: The basis of developing leaders and coaching has to be the human development of the client. Positive human development does not happen without developing a strong ethical compass. To coach leaders to be more ethical requires both the coach to have a high level of ethical consciousness themselves and to have some knowledge of ethics in order to help the client in their context. However, in my experience it is very often not ethics per se that is the problem, but the lack of putting ethics into action. And that not only requires an ethical mindset but also caring behaviours. So a leader needs a high emotional intelligence as a foundation for building and developing their spiritual intelligence (ethics and values). We have a specific programme to achieve this either as 1:1 coaching or with a cohort of peers. See https://www.leadershapeglobal.com/ethical-leaders-cultures — which itself is included in the advanced part of the Transpersonal Leadership Development Journey programme.
Similarly, on judgment: I agree with the sentiment and need…..and would suggest any traction will lie in the framing: Ethical principles to support ‘good judgement’, rather than ‘teaching ethics’ per se. The great irony is that leadership coaching has a strong espoused focus on navigating the genre of ‘thorny issues’ and ‘wicked problems’….all inherently ethically problematic….but, in my experience, adopts a ‘situational lens’ more often than not. The approach of ‘Client-centred pragmatism’ often fails (or doesn’t even notice) a conversational table littered with dilemmas.
On context: Unfortunately, in many places, education has voluntarily or coercively submitted itself to the laws of the marketplace. This starts in day-care centers, which can no longer be places where children can play freely, but must prepare them for school, work, success and a career. Tinkering was yesterday. Today one project follows the next. The parents expect that. Why? Because they are the rules of the game in their job and they take them to their children’s day-care centers and schools. We badly need education as a critical corrective, but it is an “unreliable” ally.
It might not be enough: Good Luck with this one Otti! Maybe you meant mandatory ethics qualifications for anyone who is human …. but even that won’t help. I can give many examples of parts of society (including sports coaches, doctors & therapists, priests, rabbis, etc.) who are really big on ethics. This is what happens when you put humans in a position where they are free to take advantage of other humans — especially people much younger and weaker than them. Including parents — all these examples are coming to the surface now because we live in a transparent world. And not to mention managers and bosses who still get away with it even though there is so much more awareness now and the “weak” are speaking up. All the above mentioned except for parents have been certified by society in some manner …. so as was said here “we need systemic ethics, naturally built into the operating system” — but I’m adding, not just for organizations — but for all of society. To cure ourselves from neoliberalism and all the other isms threatening to take down civilization, we must reach their common root — the pathogen that causes us to exploit and possibly destroy each other — and cure it.
From: “Sunday Morning Thoughts on LinkedIn” — I will report some of the interesting LinkedIn dialogues here, paraphrased and applying the Chatham House Rule — trying to protect some of the sentiments, thoughts, and above all our stimulating discussions from oblivion ;-)
