The boundary
What your sponsor sees, and what they never will
Somebody else is usually paying, and they often sign off your promotion. So the reporting boundary is written down, stated out loud in the contracting session, and identical for every client we have.
What the sponsor receives
Agreed with you, in advance
What the sponsor never receives
Whatever the pressure
The only two exceptions:
- A risk of serious harm to you or to another person.
- Legal compulsion — a court order or a regulatory obligation we cannot lawfully resist.
Note what is not on that list. A frustrated sponsor is not an exception. A senior sponsor is not an exception. A sponsor threatening not to renew is very much not an exception, and a practice that would bend there has already told you what it is.
How the Stakeholder Read stays safe
Between eight and twelve people around your seat are interviewed for half an hour each: your manager, two or three peers, three or four of your team, sometimes a board member or a customer. Every one of them is told the same thing at the top of the call — that what they say will be themed with everything else and never attributed.
You see the themed read before anyone else. Your sponsor sees only the themes that also appear in the mid-point or closing readout. If a theme could only have come from one person, we do not use it, however useful it is.
Where notes live
Session notes are held in an encrypted store hosted in the United States, retained for three years and then destroyed. Nathan, who handles contracting and scheduling, has never seen a session note and does not have access to the store. We collect no biometric data of any kind.
If you are the sponsor reading this
You may be wondering what you actually get for the money if you do not get detail. You get a leader who is telling their coach the truth, which is the only condition under which any of this works, and you get progress against goals you helped write and can see moving in the behaviour of the person you commissioned it for.
Sponsors who understand coaching find this boundary reassuring. In fourteen years we have declined three engagements at the contracting session because the sponsor wanted a reporting line. Each of those organisations came back later for something honest.
Chemistry call
Start with a conversation, not a contract
Thirty minutes with up to three coaches, free, with no sponsor in the room. You choose who you work with — we never assign.