Is my coaching confidential?

Video transcript:

Is my coaching confidential?
Well I don’t just mean my coaching but
coaching in general.
Now from a legal point of view coaching
is not confidential. It’s not one of those
prescribed professions that you can have a
legal client relationship with where
you can hold things confidential.
If your client mentions some kind of
illegal practice or some kind of crime
they committed within a coaching session
and a policeman asks you about it
in the very unlikely case that happens then
you can’t say I’ve got client confidentiality
and I can’t tell you.
Now, that being said
there are issues of confidentiality.
In general your coaching sessions
are confidential accept for that
legal limitation you might have.
And in a working situation
so as an external coach going into an
organisation I make it very clear with
my direct clients boss or organisation
that everything I talk about with my
coaching client in conversation is
confidential and I will not tell anybody
outside of the session anything
about the session.
And I make that very very clear
because, and very often I’ll have that
persons boss and that person in the room
and make that very clear statement as a
matter of fact and get agreement from the boss
in front of the client just so they have
the reassurance.
That’s very important because in a coaching
session people should feel free to talk about
whatever they want to talk about
including many times, for example,
wanting to leave the job they’re in
or leave the organisation and as a coach
you might help them do that.
We could talk a lot more about that but that’s
actually quite a cost effective way to help
someone leave an organisation;
to get a coach to help them do that
rather than face all the other ways
it could happen.
Anyway the person needs to feel free to say
whatever they want to say in a coaching session
and so within that context
absolutely your coaching is confidential.
There are times when a coach undergoes what’s
called Supervision.
In that particular case what a coach will do is ask
if they can record a session and then they
play it back with a coaching supervisor who’s
interested in helping that coach
develop their coaching practice.
Normally what would happen is a coach would
tell you that and request that that’s ok and then
what they would do is delete that coaching session
once they’ve had that supervision with their supervisor.
And within that three person bubble the
conversation is still completely confidential.
I hope that makes sense.
That’s clear standard coaching practice.
If a coach tells you anything different
they’re wrong.