You have a right to expect confidentiality from professionals you hire and work with, including me as your professional coach.
→ Coaches are not protected by any client privilege laws, however, so I like to be fully transparent about how I will handle any information you share with me.
In general, anything you tell me is treated as confidential. I’m not going to post, publish, or talk with my friends – or your friends – about it.
More specifically:
- I WILL – with your written permission only – share specific comments or situations in my marketing or training materials. These do not need to identify you personally if you’d rather they not.
- I MAY share specific comments or situations with a mentor coach, without identifying you personally.
- I WILL NOT share any information about you with anyone in your life, unless you have asked me, in writing, to do this.
- I WILL NOT share your concerns, ideas, intellectual property, or personally identifying information with anyone else EXCEPT in a few rare circumstances:
1) I reserve the right to comply with a court order or subpoena to testify in a court of law if I feel that is appropriate and needed.
2) If you are in immediate danger of serious harm, I reserve the right to cooperate with emergency services and/or you medical providers and/or friends or family you have indicated are safe people for you, to increase your safety and/or reduce your risk.
3) If you indicate that you are harming or intend to harm a child, elder, or other vulnerable person, I reserve the right to alert emergency services of the danger to the person or people.
I publish my confidentiality process clearly here on my website specifically so that you can make informed choices about what you want to tell me.
It is never my goal to ‘get you in trouble’, embarrass you, or to make things harder for you.
And I am aware that outside intervention, especially if it isn’t something you choose, often creates more problems that is solves.
I have supported people in crisis, in emergencies, who were considering suicide, who were beyond their capacity to cope as a caregiver, and who had committed crimes, without any outside intervention.
That is almost always the best choice, and it is always the option I will try to get us to.