Legal Issues

This class was held on Tuesday, February 27, 2007. We started off the class talking about having a Coaching Agreement. What should be included? What coaching is, the process of coaching, who calls who, how long are the sessions, what is the fee, how will the client pay, how long is the relationship, confidentiality, what the client can expect. I felt good about my agreement after hearing what most people were putting in their agreements. The ICF Code of Ethics was mentioned and I was interested in getting a hold of a copy of that.

We discussed what we would do if we no longer felt like our coaching was effective but the client kept coming anyway. The idea of coming up with asking the client what they were getting out of the coaching, possibly offer other types of support (i.e. therapy, consulting), build in an evaluation point in the coaching process, express our own feelings, seek out advice from other coaches or mentor coach (Is it us or the client?). I thought this was a great topic to think about. I am sure that at some point I will feel that the coaching process gets to a place that it is no longer effective and to think about how to handle that ahead of time was great.

What do we do when we have a client that threatens to harm themselves? In the U.S. (California) we are legally bound to break confidentiality if someone threatens to harm themselves or others. I think I may add this to my coaching agreement.