COLLABORATION: Ethical Partnership in Action
The 2025 update to the ICF Core Value of Collaboration invites us into deeper relationships, not just with clients, but with each other, across cultures, roles, and experiences.
This value now emphasizes partnership as a dynamic process. It calls us into shared power, mutual respect, and ethical connection—not only in coaching sessions, but in how we approach systems, organizations, and our coaching communities.
Here's how the 2025 update shapes and strengthens this value:
• Partnering and cooperating with others to achieve shared goals: True collaboration honors each voice. Are we inviting the client to shape the session moment to moment? Are we, as coaches, co-creating or subtly directing?
• Engaging in ethical relationships, including clear agreements: Collaboration isn’t just about being nice—it’s about being clear. Setting and revisiting agreements ensures alignment, especially when circumstances shift.
• Cultivating mutual respect and equality: Superiority and savior-hood have no place in coaching. Our clients are experts in their lives—we’re simply facilitators of what already lives inside them.
• Communicating and interacting with honesty and openness: What happens when we pause to ask: “What’s not being said right now?” Openness invites the unsaid to be seen, and transformation to unfold
✨ Reflection:
What practices help you stay attuned to shared opportunity in your coaching? Where might you need to clarify collaboration, especially across cultural or organizational contexts?
Final Thoughts:
The ICF Values are no longer silent values that live in the background. They are alive, embodied calls to how we show up and how we relate. They ask questions like: Can you hold both your role and your humanness? Can you stand for clarity and shared influence, without losing connection?
I would love to hear your thoughts and how you honor Collaboration in coaching and in life.
With Love,
Marilyn ox
✨If you would like to explore further:
✔️ ICF Ethics Updated Course: HERE
✔️ ICF Update Code of Ethics: HERE
✔️ ICF Core Competency Bootcamp, July 22, 2025: HERE
✔️ Next Live Morning Coaching, The Coach’s Mirror: August 14, 2025: HERE
🗓️ Schedule a time to Chat → HERE
