Relational Contracting
Beyond checklists and awkwardness in how you start your sessions
Hello,
A warm welcome from a frosty Surrey. After a year that’s taken us from Snowdonia to Mauritius and now into our new home in Guildford, I’m settling into a rhythm again, and enjoying the deep pleasure of working with many of you in person.
Alongside coaching, much of my recent work has been in supervision - with individuals, groups, and teams of coaches. This continues to be a part of the field I care deeply about, and the place where many of the themes I’m exploring in my wider teaching and programme design are taking shape.
This year has been a natural turning point in my practice. The supervision rooms, the in-person sessions, and the conversations with many of you have clarified the kind of learning spaces I want to build.
Next year I’ll be bringing some of that into a more formal offering for coaches who want to extend and deepen their craft. It’s still taking shape, but early details are beginning to settle and feeling good.
Before then, new supervision groups will be forming soon for coaches at the Advancing stage (non-Fridays) and Advanced stage (Fridays). If you’d like more details, on feel free to get in touch with me via email or on a call
Here’s today’s piece.
Within the coaching space, there is nothing more fragile, more scared, more important than the first 5-10 minutes of each session.
Beyond the small talk, there is - each time you meet - an agreement formed. Done poorly, or briefly, or at too superficial a level, it will lead to stilted, awkward and often transactional coaching conversations.
Because ‘fake it til you make it’ doesn’t really work in coaching. You can’t fake presence. You can’t fake a still mind. You can’t fake an open heart.
Many in their coaching journey will prioritise the practical. Time, confidentiality, recording, notes, boundaries. I call this the procedural.
As well as this, it is important to gather feedback. Trusting yourself that you can recalibrate if your client wants more - or less - challenge, support, creativity, space.
But the most important question address how you and your client will relate to each other. How you will really be with each other. What needs to be voiced, agreed, negotiated for this to be a trusting, safe and meaningful piece of work.
I call this aspect of contracting the relational.
Through the years I have experienced some deeply helpful enquiries, offers and asks from my coaches and supervisees. That strike to boldness, that touch my heart. And that edge me towards discomfort.
We’ve spoken about death, mental illness, heartbreak, trauma, not feeling good enough, shame, masking and judgement. Or just how shit a week they’re having.
My concern for many coaches is that contracting is too often skipped over. Brushed through. A rigid, formulaic and inauthentic experience. Ultimately hollow.
As I see it, good contracting offers a deep, nourishing blend of the procedural and relational. Great contracting transcends process and facilitates two souls meeting.
Co-Creating the Container
In a first session last week with a supervisee, I shared the metaphor of us weaving a wicker bowl together. We were, together in plenty of space, jointly weaving together the different strands that made up our relational container. The thing that will hold our work. And, in a sense, the way in which I will hold the space and my client, so that we can both feel safe and trusting in each other, to do this work.
For those that value a definition, I believe that contracting is, ‘anything shared, asked or agreed between coach and client that facilitates depth, trust and courage safely in the work’.
The Anxiety to Rush Through It
In discussions with new coaches, I often encounter a paradox. On one hand the coach wants to behave like a ‘good coach’. Follow diligently the guidance of their training, ticking off those competency markers. Remembering all the points while still maintaining deep presence.
But they notice it feels forced, stiff, rigid. That both they and the client know the deal, and are wasting time going over the same things every time.
In exploring this we often discover that there is a place beyond the rigid and the forced. A place of relevance, and ritual. A portal through which you must pass into the coaching place.
Bring Your Needs In
Your contracting is also a place to bring your stretches, your insecurities, your asks. You will, of course, need to both experiment and use your judgement.
As an example, those within the ICF system will be required to record some coaching sessions. And will often feel mighty uncomfortable about coaching whilst recording themselves. The presence, looseness and risk-taking is often affected. There feels, somehow, extra pressure to perform well in the session.
I say, more often, better to name that. Bring it into the conversation. Self disclose, and use that to model your openness, vulnerability - the truth of your experience. And use it as a way in to explore how your client feels about being recorded.
Bringing it into the work, operating from a deeper layer of congruence, as opposed to pretending it isn’t there will often diminish it. If not, it will be slithering around your consciousness all session, and your clients will pick up on it, consciously or unconsciously.
How you are in your first few minutes will set the tone, the mood and the rhythm of how your coaching session will unfold. My challenge, or offer, to you is to explore how you might bring even more stillness, presence and creativity - even more of you - into how you start your coaching conversations.
Warmly,
George
There’s a podcast episode on this subject: Simon Cavicchia: Paradox, Complexity & Connectedness - Link here
Your Coaching Development
Thanks for reading, and for the conversations and encouragement many of you have offered through this season of change.
I’m hosting a free workshop on Coaching with Challenge on Dec 4th. Details and signups here
If you’re curious about joining a supervision group, exploring 1:1 work, or hearing more about the new programme taking shape for 2026, you’re welcome to drop me a note or set up a call.