Here are nine practices for a coach to consider:
1. Understand the Cultural Principles and Ethical Standards of Your Community: Sometimes when someone from a different culture says or does something, we disagree because it feels wrong to us. Become aware of this feeling. Seek to understand the cultural beliefs of your community and how these impact you. What happens when you find your ethical practice in conflict with that of a client? Read and become familiar with your professional code of standards so you know what is expected of you, the ‘rules’ to which you are expected to adhere by being part of that community. Once you fully understand these ‘rules’ they can provide a ‘GPS’ for you when navigating a conversation with someone with different cultural ethics.
2. Understand Your Cultural Ethics: They are not globally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’: In your culture there are certain behaviors that are considered the norm or ‘right’ and others that are considered ‘wrong’ or not acceptable. For example, let’s refer back to principles around gender. If your cultural ethics beliefs are that genders should not be treated equally, then when in a conversation with someone who does believe this, based on their cultural ethics, you may consider their perspective to be ‘wrong’.
When it comes to ethical practices, there is no global ’right’ or ‘wrong’ because all communities are passionate about and believe their practices are ‘right’. Our ethical practices are ‘right’ for our community be it an organization, professional group, country etc. This however does not mean other groups that have different cultural ethics are ‘wrong’. Rather we should consider them as different such that we seek to be open and non-judging so we can better understand them. This does not mean we need to agree with them, just better understand them.
3.Re-examine Your Coaching Relationship: If you find your cultural ethical practice is different from that of a client, such that it is interfering with the coaching process, perhaps there is a need to re-evaluate the coaching relationship and determine if you are the best coach for this person. In this way you demonstrate respect for both you and your client.
4.Connect Ethics and Goals: Once we accept that a client has different ethical practices than we do, we need to better understand those practices. If we can accept our ethical practices as different, we then need to be open and curious and seek to understand their beliefs. Once we gain clarity, we can then connect their ethical practices to how they live their lives, what they believe in and value and how this may impact the goals they have developed for themselves. If your client is female and lives in a society that believes in gender inequality and her goal involves success in achieving a certain position, greater financial gain, leadership etc, your exploration with her may be different than it would be if gender equality is the norm.
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