CHAPTER
5
Contracting the Coaching Process with Clients and Sponsors
CONTRACTING CAN BE COMPARED TO PREPARING A ROOM FOR PAINTING: IT MAY SEEM TO DELAY THE START OF THE NEEDED WORK, BUT PREPARATION ALWAYS PAYS OFF LATER IN BOTH EFFICIENCY AND QUALITY OF RESULTS. That same principle applies to contracting the coaching process, even though you may be tempted to bypass this step out of urgency to get started. Nonetheless, this step, whether simple or complex, needs to be part of the start of every coaching engagement.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, various discussions and decisions may have preceded your initial meeting with the sponsors of the coaching engagement. In order to inform your contracting, you need to uncover what was previously discussed by asking several questions:
How is the development need described and by whom?
Why was coaching selected and why now?
What preferences, if any, do sponsors have about the coaching process?
What is the organization’s experience with coaching?
Contracting provides an opportunity for you to discuss these questions with sponsors, and later with the client, so that the coaching process can be designed to fit both organizational and client needs.
Contracting: Definition and Challenges
Contracting is the step that enables the sponsoring organization, the client, and you, the coach, to reach agreement on the coaching engagement process—in other words, how coaching can best achieve the results that are envisioned. The contract may be written as a letter or as a more formal document, or it may even be left as an oral understanding if you and the organization have worked together before. As the first step you will take to manage the engagement, contracting is aimed at aligning expectations for all those involved in the process (see Figure 5-1).
In organizations where coaching is well established or where you have coached before, contracting may be a matter of confirming your usual process and highlighting any exceptions within a particular case. In organizations where you have never coached and/or where there is little experience with coaching in general, you may need to clarify your approach and discuss important details before you start. In fact, it is in those situations when a written contract or letter of agreement is particularly important.
The Contracting Process
There are three parties to contracting with overlapping interests: the client, the sponsoring organization, typically represented by a human resource professional and/or the client’s manager, and you. All parties can, and should, play a role in shaping the contract. The contract reflects your mutual agreement about the implementation and the general outcomes of the coaching process that are critical to establishing a working relationship among all the parties.
The client’s involvement in pre-coaching contracting may be minimal, but it is no less important. Client-coach contracting usually occurs during the initial meeting with the client. Progress on your Personal Model of coaching will prepare you to discuss the elements of your preferred process with the client and negotiate any modifications requested. If a written contract has already been drafted, it can be shared with the client, although fees usually are not included in that draft copy. Typically, clients have already been briefed about their organization’s approach to coaching, but it is always useful for you to confirm process elements, especially about confidentiality. Clients can be encouraged to express reactions, ask questions, and suggest process adjustments that they prefer.
Figure 5-1. Contracting: Setting process expectations
This early discussion before coaching has begun to reach mutual consent about the coaching process also serves a more profound purpose: It allows you to establish whether the right chemistry exists for you and the client to work well together. If this appears likely, even though coaching has not officially started, you may choose to move into a coaching interaction with the client. You might explore the client’s felt needs for coaching, making observations about them or even reframing those needs to make them clearer and more actionable. In this way the client can immediately experience what working with you would be like. You might even label the interaction as a sample of your coaching and explore the client’s reactions to it. Making this chemistry meeting substantive will also give you a sense of the client’s openness, self-insight, and readiness for coaching. Agreeing on the coaching contract is important, but getting a coaching relationship started with the client may be an equally important aspect of your initial meeting.
The broad and specific topics that are usually addressed in a standard coaching contract include:
1. Scheduling—when you might be available to start the engagement and the frequency of meetings
2. Nondisclosure—your assurance that you will never disclose any organizational information you may be exposed to
3. Confidentiality—how you will handle information you obtain about the client, including interview and assessment results, feedback summaries, and development plans
4. Time frame for the engagement
5. Location for the coaching
6. Frequency of coaching sessions
7. Data-gathering processes or instruments that the organization typically uses
8. Deliverables expected from the coach
9. Evaluation of results
10. Definition of successful outcomes
12. Milestones in the coaching process
Although all the issues listed are potentially relevant to your agreement with the organization, it is especially important that the contract be explicit with respect to confidentiality and how client information used at any point in the coaching process will be handled. Most coaches prefer to keep the details of confidentiality agreements as simple as possible. When organizations require you to provide progress reports or other content information, it is also important to clearly agree on what topics those reports should contain and how they will be handled. Often you and the client will jointly produce them.
A typical way to contract about confidentiality is for you to be open about the coaching process but to hold all content confidential, except for the draft of the development plan. Such an approach encourages progress checks between coaches, clients, and sponsors but avoids pressure to reveal any client data or what has been covered in coaching sessions. Contracting for this level of privacy helps to establish and sustain the client’s trust.
Organizations that are interested in hiring you as a coach tend to respect your experience in structuring engagements and therefore they are not likely to inject requirements that conflict with either usual coaching practices or your specific Personal Model. Occasionally, however, the organization has requirements that may not be part of your usual coaching process but that can be made acceptable. These might include the use of a particular assessment method or adhering to specific touch points during coaching.
More rarely, organizational preferences may diverge in important ways from your coaching model. For instance, the organization may specify a preference for telephone versus in-person sessions, or ask that an engagement be unrealistically brief given what is expected. Other examples of potential contracting conflicts: a manager who opts out of the coaching process, assessment results that are shared with the sponsors, expectations for you to also help the client’s team, or a requirement that you teach organization-favored leadership models.
Contracting empowers you to bring your preferred coaching process to the foreground, even if to do so will highlight differences between your approach and the organization’s preferences. In those situations, sponsors often relent when you explain your concerns. For example, an HR sponsor may have neglected to build in an opportunity for you and the client to share a development plan with the client’s manager. The sponsors are likely to approve that step when you explain the importance of getting the manager’s suggestions and support for implementation.
Hopefully, you can negotiate elements so that they are aligned with your preferred approach. If your requests are rejected or the process requirements are in stark contrast with your approach, you can consider declining the engagement. It is always better to reveal process expectations before coaching begins rather than stumble over them later and find yourself with process, or even ethical, quandaries.
Once engaged, you can begin monitoring the behaviors of the client and sponsors with regard to the standards expressed in the contract. When managers fail to honor their obligations to attend meetings or return phone calls, or clients consistently show up unprepared for sessions, alignment with the contracted process is potentially at risk. Often just a reminder about what was agreed to in the contract is enough to bring participants back into alignment. Having an active partnership with your HR sponsor can be very valuable both to communicate the problem and to get internal leverage to correct it.
The contract is also useful for addressing more serious or prolonged digressions from the agreed-upon process. As leader of the coaching process, you have the right to call for a meeting with client and sponsors in such situations to discuss and resolve threats to the overall success of the engagement. However, the need for such a measure is less likely if you have invested the time it takes to get all the parties to accept the contract before coaching starts.
Sample contracts are included as Exhibits 2, 3, and 4 in the supplementary material at the end of this book.
While discussing and confirming the elements of the coaching process may not be the most complex part of coaching, it is an essential foundation to a successful engagement. Coaches often neglect important details, such as steps in the coaching process, data gathering, or confidentiality. In the case described here, the negotiations had moved along very quickly, and the sponsoring organization clearly wanted the coach to engage with the client without any delay. The coach was responsive to that urgency, but also took the time to make sure the HR sponsor had a written contract in hand and could confirm its acceptability before any coaching began. Contracts are not always shared with clients, but in this case, with a job potentially in jeopardy and pressure for a quick start, discussing the contract with the client (without reference to fees and invoicing) may facilitate progress.
Also, since the CAO seems to be the driving force behind the need for the coaching, the coach found it helpful to interview him very early in the process, get his feedback on the client’s needs, and contract with him about the time and steps required for the coaching. This type of discussion helps to prevent gaps from emerging later in the process. The coach can also discuss with the manager the interdependency of client, coach, and sponsors and how each supports developmental progress.
Takeaways
There are three parties to contracting, with overlapping interests: client, sponsoring organization (typically represented by the client’s manager and HR), and you, the coach. All three parties can and should have a hand in shaping the contract.
Whether written or oral, a contract comprises the recommended elements: steps in the coaching process, roles and responsibilities, data-gathering process, time frame, frequency of coaching meetings, confidentiality, and other details. It may also include a general statement about the goals of the coaching.
Client-coach contracting is the initial part of establishing a working relationship, so the elements must be mutually agreed to. They are usually addressed orally, but a written contract can be shared with clients as well.
Your Personal Model of coaching can help you determine the suitability of the case. If you become aware that anyone—the sponsoring organization or even the client—has process expectations that conflict with your model or appear to reduce the likelihood of success, you may need to negotiate these elements or consider not taking the case.
Time spent in the contracting process can pay off by keeping the client, sponsors, and you aligned with an effective coaching process.