Six weeks into a promising engagement last year, my client texted me a photo of his resignation letter at 10:47 PM on a Sunday. Not a draft. The final version, already in an envelope on his kitchen counter. He wanted my thoughts before he handed it over Monday morning.
I stared at my phone for a long time. Not because I didn't know what to say. Because I didn't know what the rules were. We'd never talked about communication between sessions. We'd never discussed what warranted a text versus waiting for our next call. We had a contract, sure. Six pages that covered fees, cancellation policies, confidentiality, and the kind of language that makes lawyers comfortable. But we had nothing, absolutely nothing, that addressed how the two of us would actually work together.
I handled it fine. That's not the point. The point is that both of us spent the first five minutes of our next session slightly awkward about it, and that awkwardness didn't need to exist.
That was when I started distinguishing between two documents I'd been treating as one.
The contract protects you. The agreement protects the relationship.
A coaching contract is legal and logistical. It covers payment terms, session frequency, cancellation windows, confidentiality clauses, what happens if someone wants to end early. It's important. You need one. I've written about the contract separately — including a full coaching contract template and what most coaches miss.
A coaching agreement is something different. It's relational and operational. It covers how the two of you will actually be together in this work. What you expect from each other. What "showing up prepared" means. How feedback flows, in both directions. What happens when the client goes quiet for a week. How you'll know, together, whether this is working.
Most coaches have the first document. Almost none have the second. And the second is where the friction lives.
Think about it. The engagements that went sideways on you. Not the ones where the client was a bad fit (you probably knew that early). The ones where the client was a good fit but something started grinding. They stopped doing the between-session work and you didn't know how to name it. The sponsoring manager started asking you for updates you hadn't agreed to share. The client thought you'd be more like a consultant and kept waiting for recommendations you were never going to give.
A contract doesn't prevent any of that. A working agreement, done well, prevents most of it.
What it actually covers
My working agreement is a one-and-a-half page document, written in plain language, addressed directly to the client. No legal formatting. No numbered clauses. It reads like a letter, because that's what it is. A letter that says: here's how I work, here's what I'll bring, here's what I'm asking you to bring, and here's how we'll both know this is going well.
The sections that matter most, the ones I've added and refined over the years after watching specific kinds of friction build up:
Communication between sessions. When I'm available, how to reach me, what qualifies as urgent versus what should wait. This alone would have saved me from the Sunday-night resignation-letter situation.
Client accountability. What "prepared" looks like for a session. What happens when they haven't done what they said they'd do. Not in a punitive way. In a "let's be honest about what that means" way. I've found that most clients are relieved when you name this up front. They've had coaches who let them slide, and it made the coaching feel less serious.
What the coach expects from the client. This is the section most coaches leave out entirely, and I think it's the most important one. We're comfortable articulating what the client can expect from us. We are far less comfortable saying: here's what I need from you for this to work. Things like honesty even when it's uncomfortable. Willingness to sit with a question instead of rushing to an answer. Telling me when something I said missed the mark instead of just nodding.
How feedback flows both ways. I explicitly ask clients to tell me when something isn't working. And I tell them I'll do the same. This tiny paragraph has prevented more quiet resentment than any other sentence I've written.
What great looks like from both sides. This is the section that turns the agreement from a document into a conversation. Both of us articulate, before we start, what a successful engagement means. Not goals (those come later, in our formal coaching plan). Something more like orientation. What does it look like when this is going well? What will be different? I write my version. They write theirs. It takes ten minutes and it changes everything that follows.
The sponsor dynamic. For clients where a company is paying, this section clarifies what the sponsor sees, what stays between us, and how check-ins with the sponsoring manager work. Without this, you're navigating a three-way relationship with no map.
The full template
Here's what I actually send. Use it, adapt it, rewrite it in your own voice. The voice matters more than the structure.
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Working Agreement
How We'll Work Together This isn't a contract. You already have one of those. This is a conversation about how we'll actually do this work, so neither of us has to guess. What you can expect from me: I'll come to every session prepared. I'll have reviewed my notes, I'll know where we left off, and I'll be paying attention to what's shifted since we last spoke. I'll ask hard questions when they're warranted. I'll be honest with you, even when the honest thing isn't comfortable. I won't pretend to have answers I don't have. I'll protect your confidentiality completely, with the specific boundaries outlined below. What I'm asking from you: Show up. Not just physically, but ready to work. If we agree on something to try between sessions, try it, or come back and tell me why you didn't. Both are fine. Silence isn't. If something I say doesn't land, tell me. If the coaching isn't helping, tell me that too. I'd rather adjust than have you quietly disengage. How we communicate between sessions: I'm available by email during business hours, typically Monday through Friday. I'll respond within 24 hours, usually faster. For genuinely urgent situations, you can text me. I trust you to know the difference. I won't initiate texts outside of scheduling logistics. If you go quiet: It happens. Work gets intense, priorities shift, and suddenly it's been two weeks since we've spoken. If you miss a session or go unresponsive, I'll reach out once. After that, the ball is with you. No guilt, no pressure. But know that momentum matters in this work, and gaps cost more than the missed hours suggest. Confidentiality (especially if someone else is sponsoring this): Everything we discuss stays between us. If your organization is sponsoring this engagement, I will provide them with general progress themes at agreed intervals, never specific content from our sessions. You'll see anything I share with your sponsor before I share it. If your sponsoring manager asks me a direct question about our work, my answer will always be: "That's a great question to ask [your name] directly." What great looks like, from my side: [I write 2–3 sentences here about what I'm looking for in this specific engagement. Not generic. Specific to this client and what I've heard so far.] What great looks like, from your side: [This section is yours. Take ten minutes with it. What does a successful engagement look like to you? Not the goals we'll set formally. Something more personal. What's different six months from now if this goes well?] How we'll know: We'll revisit this document at the midpoint and at the end of our engagement. Not as a test. As a compass. If we've drifted from what we said mattered, we'll know.
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That's the whole thing. It fits on a page and a half. I've had clients fill it out in ten minutes and hand it back. I've also had a client, a VP of product at a company I won't name, spend twenty minutes with the "what great looks like" section and then tell me it was the first time she'd thought carefully about what she actually wanted from coaching. Not what her manager wanted. Not what the leadership development program specified. What she wanted.
That's the outcome a good agreement produces. Not compliance. Clarity.
Customizing it without losing three hours
Different clients need different agreements. An executive whose company is paying and whose HR partner has opinions about outcomes needs a different emphasis than an individual who found you through a referral and is paying out of pocket. A group coaching engagement changes the confidentiality and communication sections entirely.
I used to rewrite each one by hand. Now I have Margaret handle the first pass. I give her the client type, the context, the coaching goals, and any dynamics I already know about (difficult sponsor relationship, client who's been coached before and had a bad experience, founder who's never been accountable to anyone). She generates a tailored "what great looks like" draft from my side and flags which sections of the agreement need emphasis for that particular situation.
Here's the prompt I use:
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Prompt: Customize Coaching Working Agreement
You are helping me adapt my coaching working agreement for a specific new client. I'll provide the client details below. Based on this information, do two things: 1. Write a draft of the "What great looks like, from my side" section (2–3 sentences, specific to this client, written in my voice, first person, warm but direct, no jargon, no corporate language). 2. Flag which sections of the working agreement need extra emphasis or modification for this client type, and suggest specific language changes. Keep modifications minimal. The core document is sound. I'm looking for adjustments, not a rewrite. Client type: [executive sponsored by company / individual paying privately / founder / group coaching participant] Context: [brief description of their role, situation, and why they're coming to coaching] Coaching goals as I understand them so far: [what's been discussed in intake or initial conversations] Known dynamics: [e.g., sponsor has strong opinions about outcomes / client has had previous coaching that didn't work / client is skeptical about coaching / there's a political situation at work that's relevant / other] Write in a conversational, direct tone. No bullet points in the "what great looks like" section. No phrases like "unlock potential," "leadership journey," or "growth mindset." Sound like a real person who's done this work for years and is being genuine.
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Three minutes. That's what this takes. The output needs editing (it always does), but it gets me 80% of the way there, and the client gets something that feels specific to them rather than templated.
The conversation most of us avoid
Here's what I've noticed, in myself and in every peer supervision group I've been part of over nine years. Coaches are comfortable being generous. We're comfortable saying: here's everything I'll do for you, here's how I'll show up, here's my commitment to your growth. We're much less comfortable saying: and here's what I need from you.
There's something about the helping professions that makes us allergic to having expectations of the people we're helping. I lost a client early in my career, a director going through a brutal reorg, because I was so focused on the process and the assessments and the structured approach that I forgot to ask what she actually needed. She fired me, kindly. That loss rewired how I coach. But one thing it didn't teach me, not immediately, was that I could also say out loud: here's what I need this to be in order to do my best work for you.
The working agreement is where that conversation lives. And introducing it doesn't have to feel like handing someone a form. I send it after our intake call with a note that says something like: "Before we start formally, I wanted to share how I think about working together. Take a look, fill in your section, and we'll talk about it at our first session." That's it. No ceremony. No explaining. The document speaks in a human voice and clients respond to it that way.
What it becomes over time
This is the part I didn't expect. The agreement isn't just an onboarding document. It becomes the evaluation framework for the whole engagement. At the midpoint, I pull it out. Did we do what we said we'd do? Does the "what great looks like" section still feel right, or has it shifted? Nine times out of ten, it has shifted, and that shift is one of the most useful things to talk about. What changed? Why? What do you know now that you didn't know then?
At the end of an engagement, it becomes the closing conversation. Not a satisfaction survey. Not a metrics review. A real look at what we said this would be versus what it was.
I was on my usual loop around the park last week, between a 10 AM and a noon session, and I was thinking about the twenty or so engagements I've started since I began using this agreement. Not one of them has had the communication-boundary friction I used to deal with regularly. Not one has had the "what does the sponsor get to know" confusion. That's not because the document is magic. It's because the conversation it forces is the one we should have been having all along.
Most coaches send a contract because they're worried about getting paid. Few send a working agreement because they're confident enough to say "here's what I expect from you too." That confidence is worth developing. It's not arrogance. It's the quiet kind of self-respect that tells your client: I take this seriously, and I'm asking you to take it seriously too.
I'm still iterating on the template. The "how we communicate" section has been rewritten four times this year alone. The agreement changes because the work keeps teaching me things about what needs to be said upfront and what can wait.