All practicing coaches recommended by HEC Executive Education (Executive Coaching training) must be able to justify the coherence of their personal and professional paths with the points highlighted in the table below, highlighting representative examples from the profession. Signatory coaches agree to respect this charter.
1. EXPERIENCE OF THE COMPANY
A coaching contract is primarily aimed around the professional field. Coaching generally concerns a manager or director of a company, in the framework of his or her functions and to the benefit of the customer organisation. Understanding the client’s problem with insight and placing it into a professional context requires inside knowledge of the company. The coach must be able to justify significant professional practice in businesses, ideally with managerial capacities.
2. PERSONAL WORK
Coaching is not psychotherapy. Nevertheless, coaching establishes a relationship (coach – coachee) that must avoid being influenced by the coach’s personal problems, whether solved or not. The coach must be aware of his or her main personal problems in order to assess the influences and limits and how they relate to one another. The coach must have carried out some form of analytical process or personal development, over a significant period of time (at least 2 years), with a professional (psychoanalyst, psychotherapist), within the framework of a recognised practice.
3. BASIC PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING AND HUMAN FACTORS
An important part of the coaching activity requires that the relationship with the coachee and the environment is well clarified (attitude and behaviour). Unconscious mechanisms interfere with the working process with the client (e.g. transference and countertransference, etc.). Not identifying these mechanisms can lead to counter-productivity with respect to the client’s objective. Knowing the foundations of psychology and relationship mechanisms is fundamental. This training will have to be acquired, whether through personal study (e.g. didactic psychotherapy), specific training (e.g. seminars) or academically.
4. KNOWING THE FOUNDATIONS OF COACHING
The coach must demonstrate a structural and current capacity to coach. The primary coaching techniques and tools will have been acquired, whether through training at a renowned coaching school, or through validated coaching practice over a period of several years.
Psychoanalysis, cognitive and behavioural therapy… excluding any denominational or notably sectarian approach.
5. SUPERVISION
All coaches must have a place of dialogue in order to analyse his or her own practice. Regular monitoring with a confirmed supervisor (psychoanalyst, psychotherapist) is essential. The supervisor’s name should be communicated. When needed, a therapeutic space needs to allow the coach to deal with personal aspects reactivated by coaching.
6. COACHING ASSESSMENT
A coaching assessment device may be requested following any mission. It needs to guarantee the quality of service provisions and, where necessary, develop the practices, perhaps defining complementary training exercises required for the professionalisation of coaches trained at HEC Executive Education (Executive Coaching I and II).
7. RESPECT FOR PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
- All coaches have a duty to respect the ethics of the coaching profession, namely:
- Verify the will of the client
- Confirm the problem and the possibility (reciprocal) of working with the coachee, over a preliminary, binding interview.
- Confidentiality (selective restitution to the company under the monitoring of the coachee)
- Independence of the coach in relation to the company, the client and its corporate hierarchy.