Try not to think about this article. Put it at the back of your mind. Don’t think about the fact that you’re reading it, in the bath, on the train, wherever. Then try not to the fact that I’ve asked you not to think about it. Difficult, isn’t it?
That’s the problem with confidentiality. No matter how hard we try during a coaching session not to think about certain things, we are still aware of what our clients have told us. The information we have been given, and the thoughts and impressions this has created in us, sit like a backcloth to our discussion, like a big hanging tapestry which is embroidered further each time we learn something new. Unless we have really bad memories and start each new session with a client as if it were our first, we are burdened with their secrets.
Well, that’s fine if you’re coaching only one client. But if you’re coaching others as well, people that they know and work with, in an organisation which you know a lot about, with all its history and intrigues, plans, hopes and legacies, then there’s almost too much to put at the back of your mind. And before you know it, you’ve let slip something which was coloured by that knowledge. It might be just the way you use a word or phrase, or the way you raise your eyebrow to query something they’ve said, but it wouldn’t have slipped out unless you had that knowledge.
And canny clients can read your body language as well as you can read theirs. Although I’ve never experienced it, I’m told clients can even use their coaches to test a hypothesis about their colleagues by asserting it and then seeing how their coaches react. They can use their coach to divide their colleagues by giving them false information about someone else. In short, they can create mischief.
Professional psychotherapists are advised never to work with people who might know each other, for those very reasons. Clinical practices of psychotherapists even have “Be aware” warnings on client records telling them not to take on clients who might know or work with this person, believing it can create unacceptable conflicts of interest. Yet we, as HR professionals, internal and external coaches who provide a service to a whole organisation, face this situation every day.
For example, let us imagine that one of your clients (and it is the individual you are coaching who is always the primary client, not the person who has engaged you, commissioned the coaching or paid for it) tells you that he is thinking of leaving the organisation. Fine. It happens all the time. So you work with this person to examine their options, think through the consequences, risks and obstacles, and put together some goals. Your confidentiality agreement with this client, let us call him A, forbids you from telling anyone else.
But then let us further suppose you hear from another client, B, that she knows A is about to be .red and she’s delighted. Actually, it was she who brought to the organisation’s attention the fact that A was underperforming and blaming everyone else for his bad results. Furthermore, your contact in the organisation who has commissioned the coaching, let us call him C, lets you in on his plan to .re A. Knowing, as you do, the perspectives of all three of your clients, A, B and C, and being subject to a confidentiality agreement with each one of them, renders you almost powerless to do anything. If your coaching style tends to be advisory and directive, you certainly can’t make any suggestions, for it would betray what you know and place you in a conflict of interests. If your agreement with your client is to work on goals, then how are you going to support A in his preparation to leave the organisation when you know he is about to be .red? And how can you comment on C’s plans to .re A when you know A is about to resign? All that remains is for you to keep supporting and encouraging each client through their dilemmas, while keeping quiet about the information you possess; information which could help them.
There is an argument that helping your primary client achieve their goals is usually in the best interests of the organisation, even if it means their leaving or changing jobs internally. The CIPD acknowledges this when it defines coaching as “developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organisational objectives”.
Note the word “hopefully”, emphasising that the primary client’s goals remain the priority.
The International Coach Federation (ICF) suggests that if a client is thinking of leaving an organisation, then coaching is a positive and timely intervention. An experience a while ago illustrates this well. Over a period of three years, we held personal development workshops for the NHS, helping potential chief executives to decide if they were ready for their next career move. Of the 500 people put through the workshops, most prepared themselves for a chief executive position and were successfully appointed. But many decided it wasn’t for them, a handful left the NHS and one even became a vicar. Concerned that the NHS might regret any loss that arose from our workshops, we discussed the risks of our programme in advance. But those who had appointed us felt that resignations were more than compensated for by the better calibre of prepared candidates for chief executive roles. Introspection is a churning process, helping people match their talents, motivations and life interests better to their roles and perhaps take themselves out of inappropriate contests or positions.
Maintaining confidentiality is hard, but breaching it, if you ever need to, is even harder. This seems such an important matter, yet the literature from the coaching bodies barely mentions it. The ICF’s Code of Ethics says: “Whenever the potential for a conflict of interest arises, I will, on a timely basis, discuss the conflict with my client to reach informed agreement with my client on how to deal with it in whatever way best serves my client.”
But those of us who deal with several clients from the same organisation know that the conflict is more likely to be between the clients and the organisation or the clients and each other, than between the coach and the client. To discuss the conflict with the organisation as the code of ethics suggests could mean being in conflict with your confidentiality agreement. Now you’re stymied.
There are legal requirements to breach confidentiality to protect others from harm under two conditions:
- if you learn that a child, disabled or elderly person is being abused, and
- if your client is at risk of self-harm or has made threats of violence against someone else.
Fair enough. But how should we define harm? Is it solely a physical injury? Is it not harmful, for example, to put someone under excessive stress, cause them psychological damage, even ruin their career? Should we decline to coach people who know each other? Should we insist our clients also keep our discussions confidential? Should we breach confidentiality if we suspect someone is at risk of psychological harm?
There is little guidance to help coaches tackle such questions. But they are important ones worthy of discussion, so let us start debating.
Code for confidantes
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re discounting information you are given. Even if you’re not breaching confidentiality, you are using that information to inform your work. So be careful.
- Remember, the people you are coaching in the same organisation talk to each other. They may tell each other what you’ve said, even if you don’t.
- Whenever you take several people on, be sure they understand that you will not talk about your sessions with anyone. If they choose to share what they are doing with each other, that’s up to them. But they should live with the consequences.
- Be aware that at times you may feel confused, compromised, misrepresented. It happens. Keep confidences, call your supervisor, keep learning.