This week’s blog comes from our friend Richard Procter. It’s particularly interesting to us because as we work with more and more coaches trained in different schools, we hear how the word contracting covers absolutely everything from any semi-legal agreement to what’s the work ever and what’s the work today (that’s the bit that 3D call rightsizing – the work for this conversation).

Richard writes: ‘What do we do when we ‘contract’ in a coaching conversation? A little while ago I facilitated a 2-day consultation event with a group of people who were mainly from central and eastern Europe. As the ownership of the outcome would be with the participants, I chose to use a structure for the event from the coaching world – as taught by 3D Coaching!

I began by introducing that we would contract together for the scope and outcome of our discussions together, but immediately noticed some consternation in the group of 12 participants. Asking what I was witnessing, I was met with an awkward confusion until it became clear that by contracting, they thought that I meant we were agreeing a fee they would pay. It was a collision between cultures and the way people understood my English. And they had already paid to be there!

This was resolved when an experienced colleague suggested an alternative – ‘covenant’. Firstly, it meant the acronym that I was using for the event structure was safe as it also begins with ‘C’! It also resonated with the people in the group who were all people of faith and for whom the concept of covenant was embedded in their tradition. Covenant in religious terms means a sacred promise between people or between the almighty and the people. Today, we preserve the concept for a wedding, which is sometimes described as making a covenant. Beyond a contractual
transaction, a covenant represents a deep commitment to fulfilling each side’s responsibility for a rich and positive relationship between the partners and future outcome. Mentioning this recently in a 3D training session, I described it as ‘The promise we agree together’, where both parties make a deep commitment to work together well for a rich and positive outcome.

I wonder, in my next conversation, what will be the covenant, the promise we need to agree together?”

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