A senior manager is offered coaching by his employer. He has a genuine problem he would like help with, which involves his own performance and his relationship with his director.
He cannot establish who would hear about it. The coach is being paid by the company. Somebody in human resources arranged it. He does not know whether progress is reported, whether themes are shared, or what would happen if he said he was thinking of leaving.
So he uses the sessions to discuss something safe. The coaching is pleasant, achieves nothing, and the company concludes that coaching does not work.
1. State the confidentiality position before anybody books
Prominently, since it is the first question and the one that determines whether the coaching is useful at all.
2. Explain the corporate arrangement specifically
Who pays, what they receive, and what is and is not reported, which is where almost all the anxiety in corporate coaching sits.
3. State what an employer is told
Typically attendance and nothing else, and saying so explicitly is what allows somebody to actually use the sessions.
4. Explain the limits honestly
Risk of serious harm, legal requirements and supervision, which exist in any professional arrangement and should be named rather than implied.
5. Explain supervision
That coaches discuss their work with a supervisor, usually without identifying details, which people find alarming when discovered and unremarkable when told.
6. Explain what notes are kept
What is recorded, where, who could access it and for how long, which is a concrete question deserving a concrete answer.
7. Explain the three way contracting
Where an employer, a coach and a coachee all have interests, the arrangement should be agreed in writing by all three before the first session.
8. Explain what happens if somebody wants to leave
The most common unspoken topic in corporate coaching, and the one people most need to know is safe to raise.
9. Explain the group programme position
Where confidentiality depends on other participants as well as the coach, which is a different and weaker assurance, as in group programmes and workshop questions answered.
10. Explain the online session privacy
Platform, recording and what the coachee should do about their own environment, which matters for somebody working from home.
11. Explain the practical discretion
How contact is made, what appears in a calendar and whether a coachee can control how they are contacted.
12. Put it in writing before the first session
A short agreement covering all of it, since verbal reassurance is forgotten and a written statement is returned to.
13. Explain the position on references and endorsements
Whether a coach would ever comment on somebody professionally, which people wonder about and never ask.
Explain the position if the employer changes the arrangement
Where a company restructures its programme or the sponsor leaves, and what happens to ongoing sessions, which coachees worry about once they have invested in the relationship.
14. Answer the who will know question before anybody enquires
An assistant that states the confidentiality position plainly, explains exactly what an employer receives, describes what notes are kept and names the limits honestly reaches somebody who would otherwise spend six sessions discussing something safe. The programme and pricing questions sit in how coaches explain programmes and prices online, a comparable delicacy in confidentiality and who will know questions, and the matching logic in ai shopping assistant product fit. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under coaching.