ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the conceptual, practical, and ethical consequences for coaching of keeping the context in mind in this way. It describes the conceptual framework behind a contextualized approach to executive coaching and how it can work in practice. The chapter also describes executive coaching as a variety of organizational consultancy from a conceptual, practical, and ethical point of view. The coach is not only listening, associating to, or tuning in to the "person" of the client in his or her context, but also to the organization conveyed in and through his or her words, silences, and feelings. Indeed, working with individuals in organizations was once termed by consultants trained in the Tavistock tradition as "role consultation" or "organizational role consultation" or "organizational role analysis". The chapter provides the idea of organizational context from the person–role–system model mentioned earlier into a series of concentric circles around the individual client.
