In our line of work, confidentiality is fundamental. It creates the comfort, candour and honesty without which meaningful progress is difficult to make.
So far, so straightforward. But often, an organisation is funding an individual’s coaching, making the investment and expecting an outcome.
In most coaching relationships, the coaching client → coach → organisation dynamic works perfectly well. To enable this, it’s important to contract up front about what the ongoing role of the organisation will be in the coaching: Who sets the objectives? How? How will progress be reported or shared? What will not be shared? And this is usually easy to establish at the start.
Occasionally, though, circumstances arise which make things complicated. This is where we as coaches need to balance our commitment to the individual with our wider professional and ethical responsibilities.
We speak about this regularly as a team and think it worth sharing.
Early contracting between a coach and an individual client, alongside the separate contract with the organisation, is essential. Establishing confidentiality, and its limits, and dealing with any potential conflicts of interest at the beginning of the relationship creates the foundation of trust needed for coaching to work well.
Data privacy and security must also be in place.
Much of this should be covered in writing: what remains confidential; what, if anything, can be shared with the organisation; and how notes are taken, stored and ultimately disposed of. It’s also important to acknowledge the occasionally sensitive issue of safeguarding, and what might happen if a coach becomes seriously concerned about the person they are working with.
When confidentiality becomes complicated
Let’s take a few examples.
A relatively common situation is someone using coaching to explore whether they want to stay in their job or organisation – If people can’t talk about this freely with their coach, then that creates a limit to the coaching that can undermine the depth of the conversation.
In our experience, many people who explore leaving ultimately work out what needs to change and stay. In fact, it is often the coaching conversation itself that restores their motivation: coachees often come to see that they do not need to leave their role, but do need to make change in themselves, or within the organisation.
Coaching can then help them to make that change. But what if thinking about leaving turns into actively interviewing elsewhere – perhaps even with a competitor? And what if they are turning to the coach for help in presenting themselves to the external market? The individual’s right to confidentiality hasn’t changed, but the coach is now in a rather different position, given that their work is being paid for by the current employer.
Good contracting up front will help, but the coach will still need a good ethical compass. If and when the interests of the organisation and the coachee start to directly conflict, the coach will need to recognise that, and may need to limit or even terminate the coaching relationship.
A different challenge arises when a coach becomes seriously concerned about the wellbeing of the person they are coaching. This is where safeguarding can come into play.
Coaches are in a unique and highly responsible position. Through repeated, private conversations, we see changes in behaviour, judgement and, on occasion, shifts in someone’s ability to cope that aren’t necessarily visible elsewhere. In an extreme situation, the coach may be one of relatively few people who understands just how much difficulty someone is in.
The first step would normally be to raise the concern directly with the individual and encourage them to seek appropriate help or take action themselves. But if they won’t – and the coach believes there is a serious risk to them, to somebody else, or potentially to the organisation – things become much tougher.
This is why the limits of confidentiality need to have been contractually agreed before anyone finds themselves in this position, even if the prospect of this happening appears unlikely.
And finally, sometimes the problem is simply that a coach knows too much.
Consider an organisation with two internal candidates for a CEO role, both using the same coach. On paper, confidentiality can be maintained, but the coach is inevitably building up knowledge about two people who, in this particular situation, are in direct competition.
Does simply having that knowledge start to affect the coaching? And what if the organisation then tells the coach, in confidence, which candidate is likely to get the job? The coach now knows something significant that one or both individuals don’t.
It may be perfectly possible to navigate this professionally, but there is a simpler solution: recognise the potential conflict at the outset and engage different coaches.
Coaching several members of the same senior team, or senior people in competing organisations, means accumulating information that can’t just be forgotten. Nobody has to breach confidentiality for that knowledge to affect the questions a coach asks and the assumptions they make.
Often good boundaries and professional judgement are enough. Sometimes they are not. And in those cases, the right answer may simply be to involve another coach or turn down the assignment.
The person you don’t see: supervision
What doesn’t tend to be common knowledge is that coaches who are part of well-respected professional bodies, or who hold certain professional accreditations, are expected to have ongoing one-to-one supervision.
This offers them their own confidential, structured space to reflect on their work with an experienced peer or supervisor. Naturally, this relationship respects the confidentiality of the coach’s own clients whilst enabling the coach to check their judgement and approach through a trusted, expert third party.
The real test of a coach’s approach to confidentiality isn’t what happens in an ordinary coaching conversation. It’s what happens when they know something difficult, interests collide, or somebody may be at risk.
So, what should organisations investing in coaching look for?
Asking some simple questions will help you determine whether the firm you’re engaging gives sufficient weight and thought to confidentiality and the ethical implications of those trickier circumstances we’ve touched on:
• What does the organisation want to see by way of sharing of coaching objectives and progress and how will it be shared? Is the coachee clear on this and comfortable with it?
• Are confidentiality boundaries explicitly discussed upfront and/or set out in writing?
• How are conflicts of interest handled when several people within one organisation are being coached by the same coach or by coaches in the same firm?
• Is there a clear approach or agreement on safeguarding or serious risk?
• How is coaching information stored and disposed of?
• Does the coach have regular supervision?
In conclusion
The real test of a coach’s approach to confidentiality isn’t as simple as promising they will never share details of anything they discuss with their client. Rather, it’s a professional framework that allows that client to speak with honesty and candour while knowing where the boundaries are, what is likely to happen if those boundaries are ever tested, and with the confidence that their interests sit at the very centre of that relationship.