Managing multiple relationships with coaching clients – what are the implications?
As coaches, striving to maintain professional integrity and ethical boundaries is imperative. Codes of ethics like that of the ICF provide professional guidelines for ethical behaviour, but the reality is that truly ethical practice can involve “making difficult decisions or acting courageously” (ICF Code of Ethics).
Number ten of the ICF Code of Ethics explicitly states that professional coaches must be “sensitive to the implications of having multiple contracts and relationships with the same Client(s) and Sponsor(s) at the same time in order to avoid conflict of interest situations.”
However, few coaches fully grasp the implications of this guideline and run the risk of falling into the trap of coaching people with whom they share another relationship without knowing how to effectively manage multiple relationships.
Indeed, when coaches encounter the complexity of coaching someone with whom they share another relationship, many prefer to keep their coaching relationships simple by keeping them single.
ReciproCoach Special Gift rounds offer coaches the opportunity to give coaching to a loved one, without having to bear the responsibility and risk of managing multiple relationships by coaching them ourselves. However, if you do decide to take on multiple relationships, then keep in mind a few key points to manage the coaching relationship effectively.
Establish and maintain extra clear agreements
When you have multiple relationships, you need to go to extra lengths to “Create an agreement/contract regarding the roles, responsibilities and rights of all parties involved” (#2). You also need to be on high alert for the slip-ups that can occur very easily when interacting outside the coaching session so as to continue to “Maintain the strictest levels of confidentiality with all parties” (#3). This means having a super “clear understanding about how information is exchanged among all parties involved during all coaching interactions” (#4), and completely fleshing out a “clear understanding … about the conditions under which information will not be kept confidential (#5).
Just as internal coaches need to address “organizational roles, responsibilities, relationships, records, confidentiality and other reporting requirements” and “manage conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest with [their] coaching Clients and Sponsor(s) through coaching agreement(s) and ongoing dialogue” (#6), so too does any other coaching relationship in which there is a dual relationship at play.
Maintain equality
One of the characteristics of a coaching relationship is the equality in the partnership. Therefore, when there are multiple relationships at play, so too are there multiple power relationships and these need to be active managed (#11).
Be on alert
As profesional coaches, we need to “recognize [our] personal limitations or circumstances that may impair, conflict with or interfere with [our] coaching performance or [our] professional coaching relationships” (#17), and when there are multiple relationships, there is more chance of this happening.
Conflicts of interest are also more likely to arise when multiple relationships intersect. Therefore, we are more likely to have to “Resolve any conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest by working through the issue with relevant parties, seeking professional assistance, or suspending temporarily or ending the professional relationship (#18). It takes extra vigilance to monitor and maintain the agreements.
All this means that when there are multiple relationships, there is even more holding of “responsibility for being aware of and setting clear, appropriate and culturally sensitive boundaries that govern interactions, physical or otherwise (#23).
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