The page on her new website is called Kind Words, and for five months it has held three grey boxes and nothing else.
Wilhelmina built the site herself over a long weekend. The About page took an afternoon. The booking page took an hour. The page meant for what clients say about her has stayed exactly as the template left it, three placeholder quotes in a pale font, waiting for words.
It isn't that nobody has said anything. A client who finished in June wrote her a card. Another said, at the end of their last session, "I wish everyone at work could have this." Wilhelmina smiled, said thank you, and didn't ask whether she could use it.
She has drafted the request four times. Each draft is longer than the last, and each one apologises more.
Wilhelmina and her clients are composites.
How do you get coaching testimonials without breaking confidentiality?
Ask after the coaching has ended, in writing, and make no a real option. Agree the exact words and how the client will be named, or not named at all, before anything is published. Take out anything that could identify them. Keep a record of what they agreed, and let them withdraw it whenever they like.
That's the whole method in four sentences. The rest of this guide is about doing it with care, and about what tends to stop coaches doing it at all.
Some readers here are still deciding whether coaching is the work they want to train for. If that's you, you can ask an RS Method Master Practitioner, in a free conversation, whether RSCI would suit you. The apply page sets it at "Approximately 20 to 40 minutes". Put in a request. Or read on.
When is the right time to ask for a testimonial?
After the work, and well away from anything the client still needs from you.
Coaching runs on trust, and a request for praise in the middle of it puts a weight on the relationship. A client who is still in sessions may feel they can't refuse, or may start performing progress for the page instead of working. So keep the request out of the sessions themselves.
The last session is a natural moment to mention it, briefly, as one item among many: "Once we've finished, I may send you a short note asking whether you'd be willing to say something about the experience. There's no obligation at all." Our guide on how to end a coaching relationship gives that hour a shape of its own, and a mention like this fits near its end, never at its centre.
Then wait a week or two. In our experience, the words that come after a short gap are calmer and more useful than the ones said on the way out, and the client has room to say no without facing you.
A few times are always wrong. Don't ask while a client is upset or in a hard week. Don't ask in exchange for a discount, a free session or anything else. And don't ask anyone whose coaching was paid for by an employer without first thinking about whether being named could affect them there.
What makes a testimonial worth having?
One that describes the experience, in the client's own words, and leaves the forecasting out.
There are two kinds of testimonial, broadly. One reports a result: a promotion, a number, a relationship saved. The other describes what working with the coach was like: how the sessions felt, what the client noticed, what they found they could say.
The first kind is tempting and often a problem. It turns one person's life into a promise for the next person, and the next person's life will be different. It can also identify the client far more easily than they realise. The second kind travels better. It tells a future client what they'd be walking into, which is what they actually need to know.
So when you ask, ask about the experience. "What was it like to work together?" is a better question than "What did coaching achieve for you?" Use their words as they wrote them. Correct a typo with permission, but never improve a sentence into something they didn't say. If a client offers a result, thank them, and ask whether they'd be comfortable describing the experience instead.
In a city where many people know each other through work, small details carry. A job title, a nationality, an employer and a month can add up to a name. Anonymising means taking out every detail that could point to the client, not only the name, and then showing them the version you plan to use.
Why is asking so hard for some coaches?
Wilhelmina's four drafts aren't a writing problem.
Watch her with the fourth one. The note is finished, the client's address is in, and the cursor sits over Send. Her face warms. Something in her stomach drops a floor, the way it might while a judge is about to read out a mark. She takes the cursor away, adds a sentence beginning "Absolutely no pressure, but", and saves the draft again.
To Wilhelmina, a request for kind words feels like handing an envelope across a table and waiting to see whether it comes back empty. Each apology in the draft is padding around the envelope. Her Kind Words page is what an unsent envelope looks like on a website.
In her case, what helps is taking something away. What she puts down, in her own work, is that warmth in the face and the drop in the stomach, the sense that asking what the work was like means asking for a verdict. A short, kind request can then go out, and the answer can be yes or no. Whether her page fills is up to her clients, which is as it should be.
Clients can feel a coach who needs their approval, and in our experience it bends the work long before any testimonial is asked for. A coach hungry to be thanked may steer sessions towards what will sound good later. That's why every RSCI trainee's own material comes before anyone else's: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained.
Unsent drafts of your own, if you have any, belong in that free conversation as much as your questions about the programmes. Ask an RS Method Master Practitioner whether RSCI is where you'd want to train. Pick your slot.
How do you ask for a testimonial, step by step?
Here's a consent-first way to ask. Set aside an hour for your first request and much less for every one after it.
- Choose the client and the moment. Someone whose coaching has ended, ideally a week or two ago, and who left on good terms. Leave out anyone who is going through a hard time.
- Write a short request. Three or four sentences: that you're asking, what it's for, that no is a perfectly good answer, and that nothing about your relationship changes either way.
- Ask about the experience. One open question is enough: "What was it like to work together?" Don't suggest wording, and don't mention results.
- Offer them a choice of name. Full name, first name only, initials, or no name at all. Make the anonymous option sound as welcome as the others.
- Send back the exact version you'd use. Their words, the attribution they chose, and where it would appear. Remove anything that could identify them, and say what you removed.
- Get their agreement in writing. A reply that says yes to that exact version, in that place, is enough to start with. Keep it with your other client records, dated. Our guide to coaching practice systems covers where records like this can live.
- Tell them how to withdraw it. One line: "If you'd ever like this taken down, tell me and I'll remove it." If they ask, do it everywhere, and confirm when it's done.
This guide is general. It isn't legal advice, and how you handle client information is your responsibility as the coach.
Two lines of care, because a request like this can land on someone in a hard season. A testimonial request isn't therapy or medical care. It sits far from both, so a client in treatment or recovery keeps their doctor, therapist, programme, medication and people exactly as they are. And if a reply tells you a former client is struggling, set the testimonial aside completely, respond to them as a person, and encourage them to speak to a doctor or a mental health professional.
What should a training give you, if you want clients to speak well of the work?
A testimonial follows the work. Three things in a training shape the work, and here's where each sits at RSCI.
- Practice that's watched. Our training page says "Supervised practice closes the gap between understanding a technique and being able to use it". Both programmes include it, so the way you hold a client is seen and corrected before it's praised.
- An ICF route described accurately. The ICF education comes at Level 1 in RS Method Coach, headed for the ACC, and at Level 2 in RS Method Complete. 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.
- Attention to what comes after the certificate. Among the people the training page says RSCI is for are those who "care about what happens after you receive the certificate", and its FAQ answers "What happens after I become certified?"
Every session a trainee leads is held to the same standard. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.
Marko Mladenovic, in his own account of his RS Method work: "I am still in such a peaceful, blissful, joyful state. I feel like I have finally found the answers on my question, Who am I?"
If you're still deciding whether coaching is your work, start with our free book, Why 88% of Life Coaches Fail. Its page describes it as about forty pages, a PDF, free, with a reading time of about an hour.
Robert Simic, training the next generation.
P.S. If there's a page on your own site still holding grey boxes, it can wait one more evening. Give that evening to Why 88% of Life Coaches Fail instead.