Can’t do it! When coaches’ worldviews challenge their interventions
Résumé
A positive if not positivist discourse in coaching tends to portray the coaching intervention as value-free, thus overlooking the intrinsic complexity of the practice. Indeed, coaches tend to depart from their ideal position as neutral third party when their values are challenged, making it difficult to remain in the contract boundaries. Thus the proposed research focuses on the intersection of worldviews and coaching practice through the angle of ethical dilemmas - what kinds of ethical dilemmas professional coaches in the United States face as a result of their worldviews, and how they resolve them. Using an exploratory case study design with two rounds of data collected from coaches via an open-ended questionnaire and follow-up semi-structured interviews with selected participants, we seek to identify the nature of ethical dilemmas stemming from coaches’ worldviews, approaches that coaches use to resolve them and the supports they drawn upon.