Can coaching competencies truly be universal — or do we just agree not to ask why?

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) Core Competencies have become one of the most influential frameworks in global coaching. Coaches from radically different cultural, linguistic, and philosophical backgrounds use them as a shared professional language.

But an important question is rarely asked: can a competency framework be universal while our underlying understanding of what it means to be human remains culturally diverse?

This question reminds me of an episode from the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The French philosopher Jacques Maritain later recalled that delegates from deeply opposed philosophical and political traditions had agreed on a list of rights — for entirely different reasons. When someone expressed surprise at this, the reply was simple: "We agree on these rights, provided no one asks us why." With the "why," Maritain noted, the dispute begins.

Practical consensus did not require a shared philosophical foundation. I think the same insight helps explain both the global success of the ICF Core Competencies — and the challenges ahead.

Agreement on practice doesn't always mean agreement on meaning.

Competencies like Cultivates Trust and Safety, Maintains Presence, Listens Actively, and Evokes Awareness are widely accepted across the coaching world. But accepting a competency doesn't mean agreeing on the nature of selfhood, relationship, or transformation.

I spent years working in international human rights advocacy, where I occasionally encountered legal scholars and policymakers — in Japan and elsewhere — who supported the substance of international human rights norms while remaining wary of the idea that those norms originated from a single, exportable tradition. To be clear, this is not an argument for relativizing rights; it's an observation about how the same practical commitment can rest on different intellectual foundations. A similar pattern may be emerging in global coaching.

Same behavior, different meaning.

Take "Maintains Presence." In many Western coaching traditions, presence is tied to authenticity and the capacity of an autonomous self to stay fully engaged. In traditions shaped by Buddhist, Taoist, or Confucian thought, presence is often experienced differently — less as the expression of an authentic self, more as openness, non-attachment, or attunement to the relational field.

The observable coaching behavior can look remarkably similar. The underlying assumptions about the self can differ significantly. This is the clearest case of what Maritain described: convergence in practice, divergence in justification. (These are necessarily broad generalizations — no single tradition speaks for "the West" or "the East" — but the pattern is worth naming.)

Sometimes, though, the diversity isn't just philosophical — it shows up in the behavior too.

Take "Establishes and Maintains Agreements." In many Western professional contexts, coaching agreements emphasize explicit goals and mutual accountability. In some East Asian contexts, the direction of a conversation may instead emerge gradually through the relationship itself, rather than being specified upfront.

Or consider a question like "Do you believe it?" — direct, common, and empowering in many Western coaching conversations. In cultural contexts where indirectness is how trust gets built, the same question can land as unexpectedly blunt or even confrontational.

This is a harder problem than the Presence example. Here, the competency itself may need to be enacted differently, not just justified differently.

As coaching expands globally, it's tempting to assume universal standards require universal interpretation. I think that would be a mistake. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights didn't succeed because humanity found one philosophical foundation — it succeeded because people from different traditions found enough common ground to act together despite disagreeing on why.

Coaching may need the same approach: not adapting non-Western traditions to a fixed interpretation, and not abandoning shared standards either, but sustaining an ongoing dialogue through which the meaning of coaching excellence keeps being co-created.

I'd call this universal localization: competencies that stay globally shared while their deeper meaning is continually reinterpreted through different cultural and philosophical traditions. It's a different idea from "glocalization" in business, which usually means adapting a fixed global product to local markets. Here, the global standard itself stays open — its meaning isn't finished, even as its practice scales worldwide.

That, I think, is the real question for the ICF Core Competencies: not whether they are universal or local, but whether we're willing to keep the dialogue open through which their universality is continuously made.

What's your experience — have you seen the same competency enacted differently across cultures, or justified differently while looking the same?