International Coaching Week: Coaching, Complexity and Greater Good

This week, during International Coaching Week (ICW), people around the world are coming together to celebrate and recognize the profound impact of professional coaching.

Coaching has long been associated with supporting growth, awareness, leadership, performance, wellbeing and meaningful change in individuals, teams and organisations, and ICW is an invitation to pause and wonder…

If coaching can have a profound impact on people, organisations and leaders, then where else might we have a responsibility to utilise that impact for greater good?

One greater good many coaches feel drawn to applying their impact towards is the climate and sustainability challenges facing our world.

The ICF Code of Ethics speaks about performing our duties “with integrity and accountability by thinking globally, being courageous in our thoughts, actions, and speech, being aware of our impact, and bearing the responsibility of any consequences.”

And so it is that every year during ICW, we give ReciproCoaches an opportunity to courageously explore and experience the impact coaching can have on our climate awareness, our sustainability choices, and the way we relate to the broader systems we are part of, both ecologically and socially.

This round brings together coaches who want to explore how coaching can support greater awareness, values alignment, behaviour change, leadership and meaningful action in relation to climate and sustainability challenges.

Participants coach and are coached by another coach around personally meaningful climate-related goals, questions or tensions. Some participants arrive with very clear goals. Others simply arrive with curiosity, concern, uncertainty, or a sense that this is something they feel drawn to explore more deeply.

Wherever you find yourself, if there is a pull, there is no telling where the coaching process might lead.

And because as coaches, we regularly find ourselves navigating complexity, systems, values, uncertainty, power, ethics, responsibility, boundaries and competing agendas, particularly when working with climate-related values and concerns, we also offer a corresponding Climate Coaching Supervision session.

Whether you participate in the Climate Coaching Peer Coaching Round or not, the Climate Coaching Supervision session provides a space for coaches working with climate-consciousness in their coaching, and grappling with questions around ethics, agenda, systems, boundaries and responsibility.

Together, participants reflect on how broader systemic issues, including sustainability and climate-related concerns, are already present in the lives, workplaces, leadership challenges and emotional realities of the people we coach, whether explicitly named or not. The supervision space also invites reflection on how we ourselves are being with that complexity.

Over the years, since the Australian bushfires sparked our first Climate Coaching round in 2020, we have explored the possibilities and reach of climate coaching together. We have thought deeply, tested the edges, and navigated the tension between empathy, responsibility, growth and agenda.

The conversations that have emerged among participants have brought reflection, values alignment, systemic awareness, meaningful behavioural change and, perhaps most importantly, a deeper appreciation for the complexity of these conversations and what it means to coach thoughtfully within them.

Whether or not you choose to participate in one of our Climate Coaching initiatives, perhaps International Coaching Week is an opportunity for all of us to continue reflecting on the profound impact coaching can have, and what it means to work thoughtfully, ethically and courageously within an increasingly complex world.

About the author Kerryn Griffiths, PhD, PCC Kerryn Griffiths, PhD, PCC, is the founder and global coordinator of ReciproCoach. Kerryn has been coaching since 2002 and her PhD explored the learning processes underpinning coaching. Since 2005, she has been dedicated to making ongoing professional and personal development through coaching, mentoring and supervision more accessible to coaches around the world. Drawing on both educational and coaching expertise, Kerryn creates collaborative, practice-based learning opportunities that support reflective practice, meaningful development and high-quality coaching.