The Journal of Coaching Ethics (JoCE) is an open-access international peer-reviewed journal is committed to fostering ethical discourse within coaching practice, supervision, research and the coaching profession more broadly. The JoCE is also interested in the development of coaching theory, ethical theory and philosophy and how it applies to coaching practice. Learn more >>
Vol. 2 No. 5 (2025): Courageous Becoming: Cultivating Ethicality
Courageous Becoming is a developmental model of ethical practice for coaches, mentors, and leaders. As ethical tensions intensify across professional landscapes, practitioners require more than compliance, they need ways of engaging that support real-time ethical responsiveness. In contrast to static, compliance-driven approaches, it positions ethicality as a lived, relational, and mature way of being. The model outlines eight interdependent movements—Context & Culture, Lived Values, Nourishment, Networks of Strength, Embodied Presence, Intentional Agency, Discernment, and Praxis in Motion; each representing a dimension of ethical development involving reflection, intentionality, and relational awareness.
The model supports practitioners in engaging with real-world ethical complexity—not by prescribing answers, but by cultivating the inner capacities required to respond with presence, courage, and integrity. Integrated with the Praxis Model—a reflective framework for navigating ethical tension in real time—Courageous Becoming also supports the ongoing development of ethical awareness and presence across all aspects of practice.
Together, they offer a psychologically informed and philosophically anchored framework for cultivating ethicality as a way of being: in practice, in relationship, and across the arc of a professional life.
