Ethics

The article of Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries emphasizes on the importance of Leadership Group Coaching in the current fast-paced face of business world. He reasoned out that traditional psychological contract between employer and employee has been broken due to continuous downsizing and reengineering. Organizations now rely on networking structures that put much higher demands on the “emotional intelligence (EQ)” of executives and pressurize executives’ decision making process to accommodate present realities. Coaching and commitment based cultures have replaced the command, control, and compartmentalization of organizational culture. The first step of a group coaching is to break the ice between the executive members undergoing the session. This is done through rigorous 360-degree feedback instruments such as Personality audits and Global Executive Leadership Inventory- an instrument that measures leadership in varied dimensions such as visioning, empowering, teambuilding, global mind-set, emotional intelligence, resilience to stress and more. Once the participants have pondered on the feedback they enter the group dynamics phase where each summarizes and discusses their feedback and the causes of their particular behavioural pattern with the others under the guidance of the experienced and understanding leadership coach, who controls the discussion environment. Both the different roles played by the members of the executive team and the effects of the various leadership styles on the group as a whole become clearer through the group dynamics of these discussions. They recognize how they could complement each other, how they could build on each other’s strengths to become more effective as a team. This in turn is expected to lead to a high EQ team whose members are to become more aware of their interpersonal roles and gain insight into the flawed interpersonal patterns. Communication within the executive team becomes more focused and less conflicting. They will take ownership and responsibility for their decisions and behaviors. Like a true high-EQ team, they learn to share common goals and values; respect (and built on) each other’s differences and use the complementarities in their leadership styles. Though individual leadership coaching is currently very popular and successful when the question of whether people will change arises rather than if people can change group coaching seems to have the edge. Group leadership coaching becomes effective when participants become committed to helping each other change and creates a readiness for interpersonal learning and insight through the personal stories shared. It lays the foundation for working through internal conflicts and crises, and helps them arrive at personal life integration. In the coaching workshop they talk about the issues that really preoccupy them and start understanding each other which leads to supportive teams. True knowledge management occurs when members of organization trust each other and realize the benefits of knowledge sharing for everybody involved. Author also discusses the difference between short-term Psychotherapy and leadership coaching in terms of focus, orientation, goal, relationship and more. To ensure effectual coaching he emphasizes on the importance of a leadership coach who have had sufficient training in psychological techniques and methods, in combination with intensive experience of life in organizations. Leadership coaches lacking psychological knowledge thus unfamiliar with the power of transference may put the client in a dependency situation or otherwise unethically overstep the boundaries of the coaching relationship. Also the author expresses concern over the ethical aspect of the process in terms of confidentiality of the personal information of participants and the firm and actual consent of the participants. His final reminder is to ensure that the focus of the group coaching is on personal growth and skill development, unlike in therapy and to retell how group leadership coaching can create successful, result-oriented, responsible and open organizations thus is the better choice.