Organizational Psychology

With the emergence of the coaching profession, there are attempts to regulate it at anational or regional level. The profession has understood how important it is to self-regulate toobtain a clear framework. The paper explores the difficulty that lies in the agreement on one definition of coaching as many of them prevail. For the ICF and other coaching authorities such as the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), coaching is a partnership that allows the clientto find their own solutions based on their own objectives. The author explores the experience in large multinational organizations, when coaching means advising and/or mentoring and/or individual training. The approach to coaching is: advising is torecommend a solution to the client, mentoring and training is to transmit knowledge and experience; in coaching, it is to induce a change of beliefs and encourage the client to make their own decisions and to implement them via their own action plan. Coaching is presented as a true profession, which is duly benchmarked by specific competencies. The most structured approach to the profession was developed by groups of top professionals coming from different countries within the International Coach Federation who strived to determine the coaching core competencies, and to create a Code of ethics. The Code defines the coach’s posture in relationship with the clients and provides guidelines in many professional situations where, for instance, a conflict of interest might emerge. On their side, the 11 competenciesare articulated under four main components: (1) Setting the foundation, (2) Co-creating the relationship, (3) Communicating effectively, (4) Facilitating learning and results. These competencies are the benchmark of the certification. The author explores the issue of coach background: the question is, when dealing with the humanmatters: does a coach to be a professional psychologist to be a credible, or can they originate from other disciplines, such as economy, law, engineering, science, or art to name a few? Comparing two main schools, and their respective lobbies, the author states that coaching is limited to the "hereand now" while psy-based disciplines are healing the past, and digging more deep into emotions and feelings. As such, the two professions are perfectly complementary and should work hand in hand as the perimeter of coaching does not allow professional coaches to deal will all human matters. Against the background of global trends the author looks at the new Russian Coaching Standardto find that it genuinely matches the high standards of both competencies, and ethics of ICF, andadds some extra features, e.g. the competency for coach’s self development, and recommendation for a coach to have supervision not less than twice a year. The Russian Standard combines strong commitment to coaching ethics and values, and broad, inclusive view on coaching embracing different coaching modes and/or styles, as long as they are compatible with the ethics of coaching, and basic coaching functions.