Back to the blog post from Monday – the contract for services with the company meant coaching two employees. After dealing with the dilemma discussed on Monday and Wednesday, the good news is that coaching the other employee is going along fine.
The employee, your coaching client, is focused on building skills and advancing their career. They are open to exploring their strengths and weaknesses and then choose what skills to focus on enhancing or developing first. As a coach, you are excited about their progress and how much of a difference the coaching process is making for your client.
At a coaching session, the client catches you completely off guard and announces that they plan to leave the company. The client tells you, their coach, not to tell the company. Yikes!
Typically this is addressed in the agreement between a coach and a company – the sponsor. Specifically, this is considered confidential and not disclosed. The reasons include:
- The Code of Ethics and an agreement state that the information is confidential.
- The employee may change their mind and decide to stay.
- The employee will be more productive for the time they are working for the company.
The caveat is that if the client also states they intend to cause harm to the company. In this case, how it is handled by the coach changes because a threat of harm is not confidential.
What do you think?
