I’ve written thousands and thousands of words in my stories here at The Coaching Commons, but now, I struggle for each and every syllable. I’ve written and re-written—or perhaps the better way of saying it is written, scrapped, started over—a few dozen times before deciding to simply write this final story from the heart and let go the results.

And so here I am, and I hope you’ll forgive the personal nature of this post.

I’m signing off as the first—and ultimately, the last—Community Supported Journalist at The Coaching Commons. The job has meant more to me than I ever could have expected, and I am profoundly grateful to have been given the opportunity to cover this amazing world for all these many months.

When I took this job, I was handed so many things—a host of reporter’s tools and equipment, a supportive and patient team eager to help me be my best, and an audience of coaches around the world, who had been underserved by traditional journalism.

I got to stand on the stage others built for me and tell some amazing stories. And I must say I enjoyed every minute of it.

I had the opportunity to talk to people in all corners of the world, and many of you have become friends—in Australia, and China, and the U.K., and all over America. It’s been so wonderful to have weekly contact with some of the most giving and interesting people, always willing to share their time with me. I’ll miss that very much.

As a reporter, this assignment was a gift.

It was a rare opportunity to try something new and different—to try and create a new way of bringing journalism someplace where it really hadn’t been before. Sure, a simple Google search will turn up all kinds of stories being written every week about coaching, but most are introductory—written for an audience about coaching, not for coaches.

What a profession deserves is informed journalism that understands the beat and delves ever deeper into it; a trade press that operates at a level far more involved than mainstream reporting ever could. That’s what I tried to provide for the Coaching Commons’ readers, and I am very, very proud of that.

A coach can tell in a few moments when they’re talking to someone who knows the field, and an emerging profession deserves to have at least one reporter on that beat.

I hate that I’m losing that job.

Of course, nobody likes to lose a job. And for me, the loss of this assignment is doubly difficult—it’s a professional and a personal loss. I feel that I have failed to prove the case to coaching that a journalist is something worth having, even something worth paying for.

And personally, well, it’s tough to lose a paycheck. Fortunately, though, in this case—compared to other newsrooms that are folding—I’m the only layoff.

I’ve learned so much from so many of you, I can almost hear your tough questions and words of encouragement. I guess as I leave daily reporting on coaching, I go with an inner coach who’s a lasting gift from all of you.

Thanks so much for everything.

In email inquiries sent to the coaches in December, “Catherine Thornton” of “LifeChangingWomen” invites the coaches to join a nationwide series of workshops in January—at a rate of $500 an hour, plus “provision will be made for transportation, meals and other necessary logistics.”

Coach Andrew Poretz was intrigued, but like other coaches contacted by The Coaching Commons, he was also suspicious.

“Her note, though well detailed, raised my suspicions, especially as this mysterious workshop was offering $500 an hour for coaches with a great many potential hours and days (theoretically, a single coach could earn some $57,000 for this one workshop),” said Poretz, who wants the coaching community to be warned about a potential scam.

In Illinois, coach Elene Cafasso was also invited to join the workshops, and like Poretz, concluded the highly detailed email inquiry was a trap.

“It’s a scam,” said Cafasso. “They want thousands of dollars. First time I’ve seen one targeting coaches specifically.”

Sure enough, the language of the workshop invitation is filled with coaching-specific language, describing a massive effort to expose coaches to new clients—and to help the participants experience the power of coaching.

“We are visiting some universities/colleges and women centers in the United States,” writes Thornton, “and we need a number of additional coaches from the United States to work alongside with the coaches from Europe.”

“Thornton” outlines a dozen goals of the workshop, including motivating participants “to be and do what they want to be and do,” and “helping them improve, develop, find personal success, achieve aims and manage life changes and personal challenges.”

The pitch is a bit wordy—and has some questionable grammar–but it’s hardly the cliché of an overseas banker emailing with an “amazing opportunity” to close out the multi-million-dollar account of a deceased client.

And yet, coaches found something didn’t add up. Another New York coach who received the invitation described it as “highly suspicious.”

For Poretz, the desire to dig deeper led him to respond to the email, asking for more information—including asking why the coaching group’s website leads only to a parked domain, not the site of an active European group about to lead a nationwide effort in the United States.

The reply—again coming from “Catherine Thornton” of London—suggested that the website was “under construction,” but by way of sharing more about the group wrote this:

“My colleagues and I are successful women in different works (sic) of life, and we come together occasionally to form a synergy that would help others develop, grow and position themselves through the guidance and support of someone who will listen and not just hear, encourage, help explore their life wishes and dreams, help plan and set goals, trust and non-judgemental (sic), insightful, motivate, and help provide a fresh perspective.”

“Thornton” then signs off by mentioning that she’s “getting ready for an appointment in Paris later today and will be catching my flight in the next couple of hours.”

The third email brings the matter of registering with the workshop’s “HR/P consultant” who has “advised that it’s vital that you register directly with her” at a rate of $4,851.

That amount, of course, will be covered by Ms. Thornton, who promises to forward the money along with a copy of the “list of workshop centers in your area and the workshop calendar.”

In the meantime, she’s off again—“a…Christmas holiday with family in Melbourne, Australia.”

That message leading Poretz to believe coaching had its first unique scam. “(The email) convinced me beyond a doubt that this is part of an advance-fee fraud targeting the coaching community.”

With no locations listed—in fact, no specific cities, just dates—there’s no way to confirm the existence of a workshop. A simple Google search finds no mention on the web of the group Life Changing Women (other than a Christian group by that name in South Carolina), despite the emailer’s oddly-phrased assurances that “we have support, and in Partnership with some of the Diplomatic Missions of the United States in Europe, International Women’s Forum and a few other Organizations.”

Efforts to reach the London-based “Thornton”—who may be vacationing in Australia, of course—were unsuccessful.

“We are thrilled to serve as the first provider of training for those seeking to become board certified through CCE and we count it a privilege to bring this training to the thousands of counselors and other helping professionals who have been waiting for a credential that recognizes their academic and professional preparation,” said Pat Williams, founder of ILCT. “We think consumers and professionals alike will be very well served by this credentialing process.”

The ILCT will now begin the process of accepting applications for the first-ever training class, and Williams believes demand for the new credential, which we reported on in October, will be “very high.”

The NBCC and CCE chose Williams’ program for its reputation, longevity, and ability to meet the requirements for the new credential. “Of the hundreds of coach training schools, the Institute for Life Coach Training was without question at the top of our list given its long-standing commitment to bringing coach training to counselors, psychologists and social workers,” said Shawn O’Brien, CCE’s vice president.

Applications for the new program will be taken beginning in January 2011.

The new credential was designed, its developers say, specifically with master’s level and doctoral level “helping professionals” in mind. The BCC credentialing process will grant credit for graduate degrees and professional experience. For highly experienced and educated professionals, the BCC credential will be attainable in as few as 30 hours of training.

Professionals with master’s degrees or higher in social or behavioral sciences will be able to attain the credential in as little as 60 hours.

The credential establishes a code of ethics for coaches that was adopted in September. The code covers compliance with legal requirements and conduct standards; CCE organizational policies and rules; performance of services—including an agreement “to avoid coaching techniques that are harmful or have been shown to be ineffective”; and the avoidance of conflicts of interest and appearance of impropriety.

As the CCE describes it, “the code is designed to provide appropriate practice guidelines and enforceable standards of conduct for all certificants and applicants. The code also serves as a resource for those served by BCC certificants and applicants (individuals and organizations), with respect to such standards and requirements.”

How does the ILCT training program work? For those pursuing a 30 hour program, the board certification process begins with a 20-hour “coach approach” class:

The class is “designed to provide training on the basics of coaching skills. The first half of our cornerstone Foundational Coach Training course, this class focuses on becoming a professional coach, covering the definition of coaching, the distinctions between counseling, therapy, and coaching, the ethics of coaching, and a strong focus on the development of the basic coaching skills or core competencies, including but not limited to creating rapport, reframing, open questions, and active listening, and goal setting. Learning is developed both through readings, in class experiential and observational learning, reinforced through weekly Peer Coaching sessions.”

Candidates then choose from a series of elective options to complete an additional ten credit hours, studying topics like group coaching, coaching for social action, leadership coaching and using assessments to “enhance” wellness coaching.

Tuition for the program runs $1,995.00.

The selection of ILCT as the first—and currently only—coach training program providing a path toward the board certified coach credential isn’t exactly a surprise.

Williams met with representatives of the CCE in early 2010 to discuss the credential, and how it might offer an alternative to ICF-backed credentials.

The other area of interest to coaches may be how the new BCC strengthens the ties between coaching and therapy. In choosing ILCT, the Center for Credentialing and Education made specific mention of ILCT’s “proven track record of equipping therapists to become professional coaches,” and that’s precisely one of the ways the ILCT is positioning the new credential to potential candidates:

“(The BCC) recognizes the strong foundation developed as part of an advanced degree program in the social or behavioral sciences, and its applicability to the profession of coaching.”

Executive coach Andy Kaufman says he’s asking his clients—and himself—a series of year-end questions to learn what worked and what didn’t in 2010 and to set a framework for success in 2011.

“Where am I most dissatisfied? What are the things that are causing the most pain and distraction that you need to focus on removing in the year ahead,” Kaufman asks.

Two other questions, he says, involve evaluating how you spent your time in the last twelve months: “which relationships do I need to invest in more—or less? How can I invest in myself?”

Resolutions—so talked about in December—more often than not, researchers say, fail to deliver lasting results.

What’s different, many coaches believe—and far more effective as a coaching tool—is taking time out to use the real achievements and failures of the last year as a foundation for an even better year ahead.

One coach offers “year-end sessions” between the end of November and the last week of December, where the objective is talking over 2010 and sharpening the focus for 2011:

The session, then, isn’t about setting a start-on New Year’s day resolution, but rather to formulate a realistic approach to continuing what’s aready been started—to “capture your
experience, growth and learning from (2010) in a way that initiates a focused plan and intention for creating more of what you want to feel,
experience and embrace in work and life for (the New Year.”

Coach Nancy Hedley calls her sessions “year end wrap-ups,” where a client’s encouraged to “take a breath and acknowledge yourself for all that you’ve accomplished this year—and thank those who supported you.”

Gratitude and reflection, rather than the traditional New Year’s high wire act that starts January 1 and often crashes to the ground before Spring in a way that can leave a person feeling worse than before they started: a “failure.”

For many coaches, the goal isn’t to adopt a resolution and hold on to it from the first day, but rather, to set goals—but lay out a realistic plan for getting there, even if it takes 365 days.

Coaches Michele Hinds and Savannah Steinberg lay out a full year’s workshop designed around achieving a year’s goals. “Everything that is incomplete stays in your consciousness until it is complete, and while sitting there, it takes up space, draws and requires energy. As long as this energy is tied up with in-completions, it is simply not available as creative energy,” the coaches say.

Their “Complete Create” course involves quarterly workshops “to keep (clients) on track.”

For Sally Parrott, a health coach, the end of the year is a time of specialized, in-home coaching sessions designed around pantry-cleaning and meal planning.

Parrott’s clients are often people with restricted diets—never easy around the holidays—and the end of year marks a symbolic time of renewal for one’s diet—with the help of a coach, so clients can “kick off 2011 better able to make great safe food.”

Parrott’s approach veers away from resolutions like “no more gluten in 2011,” and toward a healthier approach overall to food—even grieving the loss of favorites foods that end up on the “restricted” list. “It is important, over time,” she says, “to cultivate a focus on hope and possibility.”

Change, she adds “starts small, but often leads to a wide variety of amazing life changes.”

Finally, there are coaches who don’t shy away from the word “resolution,” but prefer to use it at the end of the year, rather than the beginning. Coach Randi Raskin Nash invites clients in November to think of ways to end the year with a “win.”

“Why not come up with end-of-year resolutions first? These are easily-measured goals to be achieved between now and December 31,” says Nash.

What matters most, Nash asks clients, urging them to think clearly about how they finish the year, so they begin 2011 “replenish(ed) and recharge(d) as opposed to” zapped out and exhausted.

The New Year, then, isn’t a time of climbing groggily out of a pit while simultaneously trying to keep those resolution plates spinning, but rather a time of new opportunity, the first steps on a path toward a goal—and plenty of time to make mistakes, get lost, and make changes.

Chris Carmichael sees the convergence clearly.

Best known as the coach whose training program helped Lance Armstrong win seven Tour de France titles, Carmichael doesn’t see much fundamental difference between what he does coaching athletes and what top executive coaches do working with CEOs.

“People are realizing that there is no way to separate an athlete’s training and nutrition from his or her career and relationships,” said Carmichael. “There are no internal switches that turn the athlete off and the career professional on when you walk into work. There’s no switch that turns the career professional off so one can flip the ‘on’ switch for being an attentive spouse.”

Carmichael says all coaches, then, share the same mission: enhancing their clients’ lives. One of the ways to best do that, he believes, is to avoid looking only at one limited part of the client’s life.

“As coaches we have to recognize the interaction between the various parts of a person’s life, and leverage those interactions in a way that optimizes performance across the board.”

The convergence of sports, life and business coaching may be best represented by Carmichael’s involvement in the upcoming Tour de Coach, which teams the man behind Lance Armstrong with coaches David Goldsmith and Andrea J. Lee. The event bills itself as a “first of its kind” gathering combining “the power of sport coaching with the potential of life and business coaching.”

Carmichael’s involvement in the effort includes both coaching participants in at least three challenging sports—and educating participants in using the lessons of sports coaching to grow businesses and enrich lives.

What kind of lessons can life and business coaches learn from a world class cycling coach?

“One of the things I have to teach my coaches is to be firm with athletes,” said Carmichael. “In many cases, coaches are working with successful, powerful people who are accustomed to calling the shots and getting their way. But to do our jobs and improve their athletic performance, we sometimes have to dig in our heels and tell them things they don’t want to hear.”

Sound familiar?

Carmichael says a high performing athlete and a high performing CEO won’t seem all that different as coaching clients. The key is knowing how to say what has to be said.

“You have to do it in a supportive and professional manner, but when the athlete wants to take the easy way out by skipping workouts or doing less than what’s needed for success, you have to call them on it and hold them accountable.”

Carmichael says in all kinds of coaching, the risks—and rewards—are similar. And approaching clients with the fear of losing their business is as dangerous as riding a bike with your mind constantly thinking of falling.

“In most cases, in the sports coaching realm, an athlete’s motivation drops when they are fatigued from the training. We know to expect that in the natural course of athletic training and part of our job is to guide athletes through the necessary rough spots. When they recover from the fatigue and see the gains, they’re thankful you didn’t give up even when they were ready to. It’s a difficult line to walk, though, because you’re putting your working relationship with the athlete/business person at risk by not rolling over and acquiescing to their immediate wishes. As an athlete you have to be willing to risk losing in order to win, and as a coach you have to be willing to risk losing clients in order to do your best for them.”

Doing your best for a client—even if the client’s not always convinced that’s what’s happening—can have all kinds of rewards, Carmichael believes. Among them are the word of mouth that leads to a growing coaching business.

Successful athletes will always be asked, “who’s your new coach?” More and more, successful executives and individuals will get the very same question.

“I think there are people in both areas who will tell everyone about the help they are utilizing, and people in both areas who will keep those things to themselves,” said Carmichael. “For some it’s a matter of pride: either they are too proud to let anyone know they sought help, or they are proud of what they’ve accomplished with the help of a coach and don’t want to provide that competitive advantage to their friends/competitors.”

“For athletes and business people who are successful, I think it’s more common for them to be open and transparent about the resources that were helpful to them. If you’re going to be successful in sport or business, it’s because you have a better idea, a better team, and better work ethic, not because you were territorial about the resources you utilized.”

NOTE: David Goldsmith was involved in the strategic planning of the Coaching Commons and still serves as a volunteer member of the Coaching Commons Editorial Team. Andrea Lee was the inspiration and architect of the Coaching Commons.

“To become a successful global player, you have to know the cultural rules of the game,” goes the pitch by one cross cultural coach, who argues that half of all people working in a foreign country—without adequate preparation—will fail.

As a niche, cross-cultural coaching is booming– but it’s still a new field. It’s not entirely clear which tools work, and which ones don’t.

Philippe Rosinski, the author of Coaching Across Cultures, developed the Cultural Orientations Framework (COF), an assessment tool that “allows users to examine the other cultural influencers that make up our identities.”

“It encourages the participants to identify, understand and assess their own culture in the workplace and begin to leverage cultural business diversity,” said Adrian Green, managing partner at Pressure Point GB. “As such it acts as an enabler for them to become open to new ways of thinking and identify more effective behaviors for them to reach their business goals.”

The COF evaluates “cultural categories” that have key significance to coaches, like “sense of power and responsibility,” “notions of territory and boundaries,” and “communication patterns.”

But does it really work? Researchers at the University of Surrey in the U.K. put it to the test.

The leaders of the study, published in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, were drawn to the subject because of the necessity of evaluating the value of tools like the COF in such an important part of the coaching world:

“It has been noted that coaches increasingly face situations where they are expected to work with clients from a variety of backgrounds. Hence, considering the role of culture in the work of clients is an important responsibility for coaches (e.g. Peterson, 2007; Jenkins, 2006) and in fact, a sound understanding of clients’ cultural perspectives can act as an important leverage to add value to an international coaching context (Abbott & Rosinski, 2007).”

The authors, Celine Rojon and Almuth McDowall, concluded that while “the use of cross-cultural assessments (by coaches)…is increasing,” especially thanks to the internet (where tools like the COF are accessible—for free) the “challenge” is to ensure that such tools are “acceptable and usable across various cultures.”

To find out if the COF fits the bill, the researchers pitted the framework against another business evaluation tool, the Saville Consulting Wave Focus Styles. “Both the COF and WAVE models,” the authors say, “conceptualize behavior as a product of individual preferences and influences of the environment.”

222 volunteers from Britain and Germany were invited to take the study through online questionnaires via a secure server. The lure was entry into a prize drawing.

The results—very detailed and quite complex— can be accessed here.

One of the surprising conclusions from the research was that in many ways, evaluating cultural differences strictly on country of origin may be a mistake, as “cultures are not as black-and-white as has been portrayed in previous research.”

That, the authors suggest, makes understanding the cultural makeup of each and every individual client all the more important:

“In our practice as coaches, we thus need to be aware of and respect the multitude of potential interacting influences that each individual is exposed to and shaped by when we are working cross-culturally, national culture being only one of them.”

The use of a tool like the COF, the authors determined, makes sense, though more research is needed. Specifically, “the results indicate a need for a more fluid and inclusive understanding of culture in coaching, as we show how the COF might be used as part of coaching sessions specifically targeted at enhancing cultural awareness.”

As Philippe Rosinski observes, “no one is totally direct or indirect, but individuals and cultures lie somewhere on a continuum bounded by the extreme on both ends. For example, you may be inclined to be direct 75 percent of the time and indirect in the remaining 25 percent. In other words, your cultural orientation, on the ‘direct-indirect communication’ cultural dimension, is primarily ‘direct communication.’”

Rosinski urges coaches to consider using his COF tool to evaluate clients in part because it takes into account more than just nationality, and “allows users to examine the other cultural influencers that make up our identities.”

Have you used a tool like the COF in your cross-cultural coaching? What works best in your experience?

The demonstrations—and occasionally, riots in the streets—have involved vandalism of the Supreme Court and other government buildings, monuments in Parliament Square, and a highly publicized attack on a Rolls Royce occupied by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.

The demonstrations, spurred by outrage over the decision to cut half a million jobs, reduce welfare payments and enact a five year “austerity plan” have had a side effect: putting coaching in the crosshairs when it comes to public spending.

“There is something not right here and we must get to the bottom of it,” said Leanne Wood, a member of the Welsh National Assembly.

Ms. Wood was talking about a major story to break last week in Wales, involving executive coaching provided to Anthony Snow, the former CEO of the Wales Audit Office—a public body that serves as a public watchdog group, ensuring the public’s money is well spent.

Clearly, in the U.K. in 2010, executive coaching plays poorly in the public’s mind as a good use of scarce funds.

To Ms. Wood, paying up to £300 per hour to provide executive coaching to Mr. Snow was
“a scandalous waste of public money.”

The Wales Audit Office has as its mission “to make public money count…so that people in Wales benefit from well-managed, accountable public services that provide the best possible value for money.”

To support that mission, the WAO has undertaken hundreds of national and local reviews aimed at limiting waste and ensuring leaders of local governing bodies “are effective in supporting the delivery of front-line services,” according to a strategy document issued in 2009.

Is the outrage over Snow’s coaching at public expense an indication that coaching can’t quite be seen as a good investment in tough times—at least in the current climate in the United Kingdom?

A recent study by the Bath Consultancy found “a meteoric rise” in the popularity of coaching in the U.K. over the last twenty years:

“In the UK in 2006, a survey or H.R. Directors, showed how 80% of respondents worked in organisations that were investing in one or more forms of coaching (CIPD. 2006). It appears that this has been driven by the growing recognition that learning and development are more effective when based on real-time challenges at work and involve the whole person, rather than sub-sets of skills. Another driver has been the need to develop leaders and managers who are far more skilled in relationships and engagement than has ever been necessary in the past.”

What may have drawn the case of Anthony Snow into the realm of public ridicule is the timing: much of the public’s investment in training and coaching Mr. Snow came after he had decided to leave his post—as part of a redundancy and pension package worth £750,000 (Mr. Snow’s salary has been reported to be in the range of £130,000 to £135,000 per year).

“What also disturbs me is that Mr Snow was allowed to rack up more coaching sessions in June, July and September 2009, including a ‘strategic leaders programme’ costing £1,080 held over two days at St George’s House, Windsor Castle, after a deal had been agreed for him to leave the WAO,” said Ms. Wood, who has asked the new Welsh Auditor General to ensure “checks and balances” are in place so that the “public confidence is restored.”

An investigation is now underway in Wales to determine if the spending for Mr. Snow’s coaching “represented a good value for money for the public purse.”

That investigation will come as 1.2 million families in the U.K. are slated to lose child benefit payments in 2013, and budgets for essential services such as police protection face cuts of four percent a year.

“It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future,” said U.K. treasury chief George Osborne when the nation’s largest cuts since World War II were announced in October.

When that is the climate—how does coaching prove its value outside of private industry?

A Lansing woman could soon have her own TV show on Oprah Winfrey’s new network. Dr. Stacia Pierce is known in Lansing as a successful life coach and author, but thanks to an “Oprah contest” Pierce is attracting fans around the world.

Dr. Stacia travels the nation speaking to thousands about taking control of their lives. It is a message that has proven true in Dr. Stacia’s own life. Now, she’s a finalist to get her own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network. And it all started with her video entry, which got 7.6 million votes online.

It is an opportunity that has since launched Dr. Stacia and her life-coaching business to new heights.

Read story.

As we’ve reported, Ruth Ann Harnisch, who has fully supported the Commons from its inception, always intended to turn the project over to the coaching community. The first step in finding a sustainable, community-supported model for the Commons has been the “True Fans” effort.

To date, 122 people have pledged their support through our online form, for a total of $7,463.

Our stats show the Commons gets over15,000 page views each month! Our Newsletter, Twitter site, and Daily News Feed draw over 5000 subscribers!

So why are we  significantly short of both true fans and the overall target of $40,000? (Your CoachReporter even offered a “hail mary” proposal of kicking in half 2011′s salary if the coaching community gets just half-way to the goal.)

Do you want to read the Coaching Commons in 2011? If yes, pledge now.

The ICF’s most recent Global Consumer Awareness Study, released in October, found nearly half of all participants were unaware of coaching, though one third of those people said they were open-minded: saying “they would consider participating in a coaching relationship in the future.”

What might that coaching relationship look like?

In the related field of sports coaching is any guide, it will likely include a variety of methods. Many marathon runners, cyclists and triathletes work closely with coaches remotely–uploading workout data to coaching websites–the technical data analyzed and training plans refined between coaching sessions that come in the form of emails, phone calls, or client check-ins on the coaching website.

Chris Carmichael, best known as Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s fitness and cycling coach, runs Carmichael Training Systems, a coaching company that offers in-person coaching retreats combined with coaching packages that offer various methods of staying in touch–by phone, email and via an “online coaching tool.”

The connection between sports coaching and life and business coaching may be narrowing. An upcoming event–The “Tour de Coach”–will bring together David Goldsmith, Andrea J. Lee and Carmichael, sharing the common language of coaching and winning: “Become better as a coach. Better as a business person. And better physically, whether in pursuit of a sport, or just your general fitness.”

In the U.K., the emergence of online coaching platforms has been noted by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), which recently established a coaching division. The group, the largest professional association in the United Kingdom, has appointed Kate Anthony, co-founder of the Online Therapy Institute, as its first Executive Specialist for Online Coaching.

“I am pleased to take on (the Specialist’s role) to ensure that Online Coaching is within the remit of the new Division right from the start,” said Anthony. “My first task…will be to introduce the Online Therapy Institute’s Ethical Framework for the Use of Technology in Online Coaching to be adopted by the organisation.”

That framework seeks to bridge the ethical and the technological, to ensure that the use of email and online coaching platforms serve clients, and never expose them to harm: “Technology basics are required for coaches who choose to deliver coaching services via technology,” reads the document, which includes detailed guidelines for encryption, password protection, firewalls, virus protection, and the use of third-party services.

The framework also addresses what should–and should not–be a part of a coach’s website, from terms of use, to degrees, certifications and contact information, to privacy policies. A key section also involves informed consent:

The informed consent process begins when the client contemplates accessing services. Therefore, clear and precise information concerning the nature of the coaching services proposed and how information is managed is accessible via an Informed Consent document posted on the coach’s website.

The information in the Informed Consent includes:

*A clear description of the coaching that will be provided to the client.

*How web-enabled and associated telephonic and face-to-face coaching services, as available, will be provided and supported.

*An overview of the coach’s professional qualifications, training and experience.

*A review of the pros and cons of online coaching including such disadvantages as lack of visual and auditory cues and the limitations of confidentiality via technology, and advantages that include easy scheduling, time management and the absence of transportation costs.

*How confidentiality is maintained and personal information is protected: Clear explanation is provided regarded the use and limits of technology with respect to secure (encrypted) and unsecure (unencrypted) communications such as text/mobile messaging. Guidance is provided on which type of technology should be used for secure communications and which may be used for administrative tasks such as scheduling.

*The Informed Consent will also reference the aforementioned Privacy Policy outlining the standards and procedures that will be adhered to regarding data protection, storage, management, and transmission of protected health information. A statement identifying the coach as the owner of the coaching record including all transcripts, notes and emails, unless otherwise specified through law in the coach’s geographic location, will also be provided. The client is informed that posting direct information about the coach or verbatim information from sessions is prohibited.

The fast spread of technological tools into the coaching conversation mean a host of new ethical questions (what happens when technology breaks down? Who gets charged in a coaching session if the connection is lost?) and efforts like the OTI’s framework may provide a starting point.

The BACP has said it will adopt such coaching-specific language to its own ethical framework as part of expanding to include a coaching division.