Client-led
COACHING
You set the agenda. I follow it. The questions sound like “what do you already know about this,” “what would it mean if you actually believed that,” and “what do you want to do about it.”
The terms
How a coaching engagement actually works
Most people buying coaching for the first time are trying to work out two things they are slightly embarrassed to ask outright: what does the person paying for this get told, and who is actually in charge of the conversation. Both answers are below, along with everything else in the agreement you would sign. Nothing here is a summary written for the website. It is the substance of the contract, in plainer English.
Definitions
What coaching is, and what it is not
Worth being exact about, because the word gets used for four different jobs and buyers have usually been sold at least two of them.
Coaching is a working partnership focused entirely on you. It is forward-looking and action-oriented, and it starts from the position that you are resourceful and whole and are the expert on your own situation. My job is not to direct you. It is to ask questions good enough that you find what you already know.
It is not therapy, counseling or mentoring, and it does not diagnose or treat anything. Where something comes up that calls for clinical or other professional support, I will say so plainly and help you find the right person. That is a boundary, not a brush-off.
The engagement runs to the International Coaching Federation Code of Ethics, updated April 2025. That is an external standard I can be held to, which is the point of naming it.
Two modes
You always know which mode we are in
A coach will not tell you what to do. A consultant will not stop telling you. Both modes are in scope here, they are named out loud, and you can ask to switch at any point in any session.
Expert-led
CONSULTING
I bring the pattern, the framework and a direct recommendation. It sounds like “here is what I would restructure first,” “based on what I am seeing this is the bottleneck,” and “here is a framework that tends to work.”
The seam
Where the real work sits
A leader who cannot execute a strategy you both agree is right is a CONSULTING diagnosis with a COACHING unlock. A team that keeps breaking down looks operational and is usually about identity.
- COACHING tends to leadLeadership identity and presence. Values and alignment. Recurring interpersonal friction. Role and company transitions. The decision you already know but will not say out loud. Any time the real problem is not the one that got named.
- CONSULTING tends to leadOrg design and structural bottlenecks. Systems, process and operational problems. Hiring, sequencing and go-to-market decisions. Patterns I have seen before that you are in the middle of rediscovering. Any time speed matters and the analysis is already done.
One thing worth saying directly about the coaching half. I am not withholding the answer. In COACHING mode the answer is genuinely yours, and my job is to ask questions good enough that you reach it, because a solution you find is one you will actually use. That is not a limitation of the method. It is the whole reason it works.
The hour
Every session runs the same arc
Not a script. A shape, so you always know where you are in the hour and what is expected of you in it.
It always starts with the On-Board Diagnostic. Every coaching engagement opens with it, without exception, because session one spent working out who you are is a session wasted. CliftonStrengths and EQ-i 2.0, read against each other rather than reported side by side, and written up as one read. So the first coaching hour begins from data about how you actually operate under load, not from an introduction. That is also what stops the engagement drifting into whatever was easiest to talk about that week.
What the diagnostic actually is
First ten percent
Center and contract
A short settling practice and a check-in, then you name what you want out of today. That becomes the agenda for the hour. Not my agenda. Not the one from last time.
Middle eighty percent
Explore and expand
We follow the thread you brought. Expect hard questions, some silence, and at least one moment where the thing you thought you came to talk about turns out not to be it. You do the work. I hold the room.
Last ten percent
Land and commit
We name what moved and what you are taking forward, and you commit to something before we next meet. Accountability is built into the structure rather than added on as a nudge email.
About a tenth of the value lands in the room. The other ninety percent shows up afterwards, in the decisions you make, the conversations you have, the things you stop doing and the things you finally start. What you commit to between sessions is not homework and it does not belong to me. My job is to ask about it next time.
Anything that surfaces between sessions is fair game to bring, including a setback. Nothing is off-topic if it matters to you.
Confidentiality
What the person paying actually hears
This is the clause that decides whether a sponsored engagement is worth buying, so it is written out in full rather than gestured at. If you are the leader being coached, read this one twice. If you are the sponsor, this is the constraint you are agreeing to, and it is the reason the work is any good.
- The content stays in the roomI will not share what is said in a session with any third party, including a sponsor, an employer, a board or a family member, without your explicit written consent.
- What a sponsor is toldThat sessions are taking place and that the engagement is active. Nothing more, unless you agree otherwise in writing. No themes, no progress summary, no impressions, no notes.
- If a sponsor tries to end itYou hear that from me directly, and you keep the right to continue privately at your own expense. No session notes or content transfer to a sponsor under any circumstances without your consent.
- Your company’s information tooInternal financials, unreleased strategy, personnel decisions, board dynamics, cap table, anything in progress. Held in full confidence, never referenced in another engagement, never used for any purpose outside our work.
- The public exception, stated plainlySomething already public, such as a funding announcement or a filing, does not become confidential just because it came up in a session. Everything private does.
- The two real limitsImminent risk of harm to you or someone else, and disclosure required by law. Those are the only exceptions, and there is no third one further down the document.
If you are about to say something you think is unusually sensitive, say that first and we will decide how to handle it before you say it. You should never feel that engaging properly in this work means exposing something you are not ready to expose.
Tools
How AI is used, and how to turn it off
Published here because you are entitled to know before you book, not on page seven of a document you sign in a hurry.
I use an AI assistant during and after sessions in place of traditional note-taking, for one reason: writing while listening makes me a worse listener. Capturing the session that way lets me give you the whole hour instead of two thirds of it.
- What gets madeA private summary after each session, which becomes part of your running notes.
- Who sees itMe. Not shared with any third party, and never with a sponsor.
- How long it is keptOne year after the engagement ends, then permanently deleted.
- Your copyYou can request your own session record at any time and I will send it.
- Opting outActive by default, and one sentence from you turns it off entirely. Then it is manual notes and no AI tool touches your sessions or your records.
If you want to know exactly which tools are used and how, ask on the call. I will tell you.
Practical terms
The rest of it, without the legal voice
None of this is unusual. It is here because a business officer or an HR partner should be able to satisfy themselves about the terms without booking a call to ask.
- Scope is named up frontThe focus areas, session length, frequency, meeting platform and cancellation policy are all agreed before we start and written into the agreement. Rate and cadence are settled in a scheduling conversation and reflected on the invoice.
- The designed relationshipBefore the first session you complete a short intake about how you want to be worked with. Your answers become the operating agreement between us, and if something in it stops being true you say so and we change it.
- PaymentInvoices are due within fourteen days unless we agree otherwise in writing. If timing is a problem, tell me before the due date. I would rather build a plan than let money become the obstacle.
- Re-contractingI hold responsibility for calling the midpoint check-in, where we formally revisit the agreement rather than assuming the brief you started with still holds. Also at any natural transition and at the close. Either of us can ask for one at any time.
- Ending itEither party, fourteen days’ written notice. Sessions paid for and not taken are refunded pro rata within thirty days. I can end it immediately for abusive, threatening or unethical conduct, and that is the only immediate termination.
- After it endsNo notes, assessments or materials retained beyond ninety days unless we agree otherwise, and the AI summaries follow the one-year rule above.
- No guaranteed outcomesCoaching is a professional service, not a warranty. What you get out of it depends substantially on your own effort and honesty, and any honest coach will tell you the same.
- Liability and lawLiability is capped at the fees paid in the three months before a claim, with no indirect or consequential damages. Maryland law governs, and disputes go to conversation first, then mediation, before anything formal.
The signed agreement is sent before we start, and there is nothing in it that is not on this page. If you find something in the document that surprised you after reading this, that is my failure and I want to hear about it.
Where next
The engagements these terms apply to
Companies
Executive coaching
Six structured sessions built on diagnostic data, so session one starts from a read rather than an introduction.
Schools
Coaching for school leaders
One leader, a fixed cadence, and a working agenda that belongs to them. Bought by the school or by the leader, on identical terms.
Not sure yet
Start with the diagnostic
Ten minutes, six cylinders, no email wall. It will tell you which part of this is actually your problem.
Next step
Read the terms. Now have the conversation.
Bring the thing that keeps landing back on your desk. Half an hour is usually enough to work out whether this is the right instrument for it, and which of the two modes you actually need.
If it is not a fit I will say so on the call and send you the chapter that is. No deck, no follow-up sequence, no second call you did not ask for.
Prefer email? matt@thatsgoodedesign.com