It's twenty to midnight on a Sunday on Al Reem Island, and Margit's phone lights up on the bedside table.
A WhatsApp voice note, four minutes and twelve seconds long, from a client she's seen three times. Then a text underneath it. "Sorry, I know it's late. Also my sister wants to join us on Thursday. She'll pay half. Is that ok?"
Margit sits up and scrolls back to find what they agreed in the first place. It's two lines, sent the day the client said yes: "Six sessions, Thursdays at 7, on Zoom. Looking forward to it."
Nothing about messages between sessions. Nothing about who else may join, or who the client would be if they did. Nothing about what happens to everything already said if a sister is suddenly in the room. Margit is a careful coach. She simply never said any of it out loud.
She types "Of course" and deletes it. She types "Let's talk Thursday" and deletes that too.
Margit is a composite. In our experience, two-line agreements like hers are common.
What should a coaching agreement include?
At minimum, what ICF's agreement competency names: "logistics, fees, scheduling, duration, termination, confidentiality and inclusion of others". Add what coaching is and isn't, what you're working toward together, what each of you is responsible for, and how the work ends. Agree it out loud before coaching begins, then write it down.
What does ICF actually ask of a coaching agreement?
Everything quoted here comes from coachingfederation.org, checked on 19 October 2026: the 2025 ICF Core Competencies and the current ICF Code of Ethics.
Competency 3, Establishes and Maintains Agreements, is defined as: "Partners with the client and relevant stakeholders to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans and goals." Three of its behaviours carry most of the weight in a written agreement:
- reaching agreement about "what is and is not appropriate in the relationship, what is and is not being offered, and the responsibilities of the client and relevant stakeholders";
- reaching agreement about "the guidelines and specific parameters of the coaching relationship such as logistics, fees, scheduling, duration, termination, confidentiality and inclusion of others";
- revisiting "the coaching agreement when necessary to ensure the coaching approach is meeting the client's needs".
The Code of Ethics adds when. Standard 1.1 reads: "Communicate (before coaching begins) with coaching client(s), sponsor(s), and/or other involved parties that the coach is in a direct relationship with to explain the nature of coaching and to co-create a coaching agreement regarding roles, responsibilities, confidentiality, financial arrangements, and other aspects of the coaching engagement." Standard 1.2 protects every party's "right to terminate the coaching relationship at any point for any reason during the coaching engagement, subject to the provisions of the agreement."
On confidentiality, standard 2.3 asks for a clear agreement with clients, sponsors and other involved parties about what confidential information may need to be disclosed. It lists the situations in plain terms: illegal activity, disclosure required by law, a valid court order or subpoena, and "imminent/likely risk of danger to self or to others". Those limits belong in the agreement long before they're ever needed. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Look at ICF's verbs: partners, reaches agreement, co-create. The agreement is a conversation first. The page is how both of you remember it.
If you're still choosing where to train, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers a free Zoom of twenty to forty minutes. Ask her how agreements are taught and practised inside our programmes. You can pick a time on our apply page. Or read on.
What goes in a coaching agreement template?
Here's a one-page template, with the line Margit could have used in each part. It's a coaching template, not legal advice. Change the wording until it sounds like you.
- What coaching is, and isn't. "Coaching is a partnership to help you think, decide and act on what matters to you. It isn't therapy, advice or mentoring, and I'll tell you if I think another kind of help would serve you better."
- What we're working toward. One or two sentences in the client's own words, agreed in the first session, with how you'll both know it's moving.
- Logistics and scheduling. "Six sessions of an hour, on Zoom, Thursdays at 7pm, over twelve weeks."
- Between sessions. "Messages are welcome. I read them on working days and reply within one working day. Long voice notes I'll keep for our next session, where we can give them proper time." This is the line Margit needed most.
- Fees and payment. The fee, when it's due and what it covers, in one line.
- Moving or missing a session. How much notice you need to move a session, and what happens to one missed without notice. Decide it before the first late cancellation, not after.
- Confidentiality, and its limits. "What you tell me stays between us, except in the situations the ICF Code of Ethics lists, which we'll read through together now." Use the Code's own list rather than writing a narrower one. On the client's copy, add: if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
- Others in the room. Who else may join a session, whether anyone else will receive a report, and who the client is if someone else pays. For Margit, the sister is a new conversation, not a Thursday guest.
- Recording. Sessions are recorded only with the client's agreement, asked for in advance. If you want recordings for your own mentor coaching, say so and ask for that permission specifically.
- Ending. Either of you can end the work. Agree how you'll tell each other, and offer a closing session to look back at what changed. ICF's behaviour here is to "close the coaching relationship in a way that respects the client and the coaching experience".
Send the page after your first conversation, not before it. Read it through together at the start of the first session and change anything that doesn't fit. A template the client never discussed is a document. One they helped shape is an agreement.
Why do coaches leave the hard parts out?
Rarely for lack of a template. Margit could have downloaded one in a minute.
What stopped her arrived exactly where she might have written part 4 or part 8. "I reply on working days" felt cold. "Your sister would be a separate conversation" felt like shutting a door on someone. Margit grew up above her parents' shop in Debrecen, which closed when the last customer left, never at a set hour. A shut door, her father used to say, is a customer for the shop across the road.
Somewhere in her, that sentence and a jolt of alarm got stuck together. The RS Method has a name for the pairing: a thought, here "a limit loses people", fused to the charge of every evening the shop stayed open. Knowing that her father was talking about groceries changes nothing at 23:40. The jolt comes first, and her thumb is already typing "Of course".
The method removes the jolt and leaves the shop where it belongs, in her past. "I reply within one working day" becomes a line in a document, and she can type it without bracing.
Her clients feel the difference. A coach who flinches at every limit can end up teaching, without meaning to, that limits are dangerous, and some clients arrive already convinced of it.
So the order at RSCI never changes: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. You do your own work first, inside the cohort and under supervision, so the frame you offer a client is one you can keep. An agreement is only as firm as the person holding it.
If part 4 or part 8 made you wince, that's worth saying out loud to someone. Sara will ask how you work with clients now and which sentence you'd find hardest to say to one. The conversation is free. Find a time with Sara.
How do you revisit an agreement once the work has started?
Out loud, early, and without making it the client's fault.
For Margit, Thursday could open like this. "Before we start, I'd like to come back to how we work together, because your message on Sunday raised two things we never agreed. That's mine to fix." Then the two things: messages between sessions, and the sister. Agree each one, add it to the page, and send the new version that evening.
A revised agreement isn't an admission that the first one failed. It's the "maintains" half of competency 3.
When a sponsor is involved, everyone with a stake needs to be part of the revision. Our guide to executive coaching vs leadership coaching includes a script for the three-way meeting. And if what arrives between sessions is distress rather than logistics, our guide on what to do when a client cries in a session covers staying steady and knowing when to refer.
Is RSCI the right place to learn this part of coaching?
Three things would make it a good fit.
- You want the ICF competencies practised, not only read. Agreements are one of eight. Our programmes pair online study with live training, and RS Method Coach includes, in our training page's words, "Hands-on work and supervised practice".
- You want ICF education built into your training. RS Method Coach includes ICF Level 1 education, toward the ACC. RS Method Complete includes ICF Level 2 education, which can lead toward the ACC or, as your coaching hours grow, the PCC.
- You're willing to find out what makes a limit hard for you to hold. Before you ask a client to keep an agreement, your own pull to over-give is met in you, under supervision.
RS Method Coach is AED 18,000 and RS Method Complete is AED 35,000, each with ICF education included. The ICF-accredited education inside our programmes is designed, delivered and certified by the Institute of Coaching and Mentoring (IICM), an ICF-accredited organisation. The ACC and PCC credentials are awarded only by the ICF.
Every agreement serves the three lines we train toward. To witness. To hold. To walk them home. A clear frame is what makes the holding possible.
Inside a frame that holds, people sometimes go further than either side planned. Talya Whitaker's account of where her own work took her runs to one sentence: "There are no words for how this has changed my life, changed every cell of my being." It's one woman's account of her own life. Read it as that, and not as a term anyone can write into an agreement.
If an ICF credential is part of your plan, start with our page on ICF certification in Dubai. It sets out how the education levels, the coaching hours and the credentials fit together.
Robert Simic, training the next generation.
P.S. If your own agreement is two lines in a WhatsApp thread, you're in good company. When you're ready to see where this competency sits on the road to a credential, our ICF certification in Dubai page is the place to begin.