Contracting: The Unsung Hero of Coaching, Mentoring, and Management
In coaching, we often talk about contracting. It might sound formal, but it’s less about signing legal documents and more about setting the stage for a productive relationship.
Contracting is about agreeing not just how often you will meet, but more about the relationship you want to create, how you will make sure conversations are productive, and how you might handle challenges when they arise.
And contracting isn’t just for coaches. It can be powerful tool for mentors and managers too.
Why Contracting Matters
Imagine starting a mentoring relationship. You might discuss meeting frequency, goals, and logistics. But what about the nature of your conversations? How will you be honest with each other? How will you handle disagreements or sensitive topics? How will you know when you are finished and it’s time to move on?
In a line management relationship, you might talk about how often you will meet 121, or your job role objectives. But what do you know about yourself at work that might get in the way of doing your best work? How is it best for you to receive difficult feedback or bad news?
There are practical implications of not dealing with the difficult well on time, money and even our health. Imagine the hours that busy people waste at work in meetings that don’t feel useful? Or the unnecessary stress hormones released by worrying out of work about how to raise something that is bugging you?
The problem is uncomfortable stuff is difficult to talk about without creating defensiveness or blame. And these mindsets are far from the optimum conditions the human brain needs to solve the very problems that are triggering the discomfort!
It’s an unfortunate truth for workplace productivity that the very things we should do to solve difficult situations or reduce unnecessary stress, are the things we are least equipped to deal with when they actually happen.
However, navigating these challenges quickly and minimising time spent ruminating on them, can be surprisingly easy to deal with if you have had a conversation – up front – about how you will navigate those things together, at pace, when they crop up.
Imagine you are the more junior partner in a mentoring relationship and you have started to feel that you aren’t going to get very much more from meeting your mentor who is a senior leader in your business. The mentor is clearly well intentioned, but continuing to meet is not likely to deliver a good return on investment for the business. It will probably start to feel energy draining for both parties. Maybe you start cancelling meetings and rather than ending on a productive high, you start to avoid one another. How on earth would you raise that cold with someone who is your boss’s boss?! Well, it is much easier, if you can say:
You know when we first met and you said I should be totally honest with you if I felt we had taken things as far as we could for now and that we should pause for me to embed what I have learnt with you and we go back to being colleagues? I think I’m at that point. What do you think?
And that’s where contracting comes in.
By setting expectations about both practical matters and potential awkwardness upfront, you create a safe space for open dialogue. You agree to be honest, to challenge each other, and to address issues head-on. This proactive approach prevents misunderstandings and builds trust.
It might also increase your confidence in dealing with difficult conversations sooner outside this particular relationship.
Our best relationships provide stretch for both parties. I would argue that without some tension or discomfort at points, the is probably not enough productive challenge in the room. Expecting and planning for that as inevitable means that when it happens you navigate it as an inevitable consequence of the pace and stretch in the relationship, rather than as a sign you ‘don’t get on anymore’.
The Neuroscience Behind It
When we face unexpected challenges or conflicts, our brains can trigger a fight, flight, freeze or appease response. This stress reaction, governed by the amygdala, can hinder our ability to think clearly and respond constructively.
However, when we’ve pre-agreed how to handle such situations, we reduce uncertainty—and therefore stress. This sense of safety helps the prefrontal cortex (the bit of the brain responsible for rational thinking) stay online, which means better conversations, even in the tricky moments.
This principle is beautifully explained in articles like The Neuroscience Behind Clean Coaching – a great example of how clarity and structure can quiet the threat response and support better thinking.
Creating Psychological Safety
Contracting also boosts what we call psychological safety—the shared belief that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks. In psychologically safe environments, people feel able to speak up, disagree, and ask for help—without fear of embarrassment or punishment.
This concept, originally researched by Amy Edmondson at Harvard, is foundational to healthy workplace dynamics. You can read more about it here.
When you agree up front how you will handle hard conversations, feedback, and boundaries, you create a shared language and reduce the emotional “cost” of honesty. That’s psychological safety in action.
Practical Steps to Effective Contracting
- Set Clear Expectations: Discuss frequency of meetings, goals, boundaries, and confidentiality.
- Define What Good Communication Looks Like: Agree how you’ll give and receive feedback—both ways.
- Plan for Challenges: Decide in advance how you’ll raise elephants in the room, or what to do when things feel stuck.
- Plan for Challenges: Decide in advance how you’ll raise elephants in the room, or what to do when things feel stuck.
Beyond Coaching
Although contracting comes from the world of coaching, its usefulness reaches far beyond. Line managers can use it to shape better one-to-ones. Mentors can use it to build trust from the very first conversation. Even peer relationships benefit from a shared understanding of how we want to “be” together.
The bottom line? Contracting is practical psychology. It gives us a plan, a language, and permission to stay human and honest—even when things get a bit tough.
Up for More?
All great coaches have supervisors – someone who has the experience to be a “Coaches Coach”. I am lucky to call the fabulous Sheena Reid my supervisor. And guess what her particular area of expertise is?
So, with a slight apology for a longer blog (but in all honestly, it’s not a heartfelt sorry as I think this is potentially game-changing content), here are Sheena’s thoughts on Contracting for Leaders as a gift of a ‘PS’:
My killer quote actually isn’t from me, so I want to totally acknowledge my brilliant colleague Hilary Cochrane for this one. And her quote on contracting is, “So often, Contracting IS the work”.
At first sight, this one maybe applies more in coaching than perhaps in a line management situation (more on this in a minute), but the essence of it is this. Very often, once the job to be done is really really clear, you realise that the rest of the work is not so difficult or daunting.
In a coaching situation, people are essentially there to discover that they do have the answers themselves – what frequently gets in the way is a lack of clarity on what the problem actually is, or, say, what ‘great’ actually looks like.
I think similarly in business. Looking back, I spent vast swathes of my time in my corporate incarnation, in meetings where a lot of the conversation was trying to clarify what we were actually meant to be doing, or, resolving misaligned expectations or solving misunderstandings.
Really great Contracting resolves these things up front, with the parties needed to create that Contract (ie with the right people in the room, and leaving anyone not needed to do this to get on with their job), and so saves huge amounts of time and money.
Think about the combined salaries of a leadership team. Pro rata that by the hour, and then work out the cost to the business of every wasted hour caused by misalignment, rework, misunderstanding or people in the room who don’t need to be there – and you’ll quickly see that Contracting pays. Think about that in terms of the emotional cost of people frustrated by time spent grappling with a lack of clarity, and the ‘bill’ grows again.
Over the last 25 years as a coach and coach supervisor, so often, a lack of clear contracting (or a lack of contracting all together), is at the root of the work I’m asked to come in to do – whether with a senior team or a leader in charge of a chunk of the organisation. Conceptually, it’s not complicated. But it’s really rare for leaders and their teams, to be taught to do it well. You do have to learn how, practice and embed the habit, but when you do, it becomes part of business as usual, and that really shifts things.
I guess for me as a coach, ‘So often, Contracting IS my work’ !”
Top Tip
When you’re learning to do Contracting well, specifically allocate a little bit of time for Contracting, before you launch into ‘doing’. I see teams all the time who just start a discussion. It looks something like, ‘Right, the next item on the agenda is the roadmap’. And then, the conversation starts, often without much structure, and certainly without a ‘contract’ for what is about to happen.
Allocate time (as an individual or as a team) to go through Why, What and How. It doesn’t need to take long, and it will really speed up the actual conversation.
- Why are we working on this at all?
Should we be doing so at this point, in this room, with these people? etc. - What is the job we need to do right here right now?
You want to contract for this session – don’t go too macro, or you won’t be specific enough in your conversation. - How will we work?
Careful with this one – this is ‘how will we work on this topic (that we’ve just defined really clearly in ‘What’), right here right now’. How is not ‘what is the solution’. This is where I see teams most commonly miss a step – they are so keen to make progress, that they leap into the discussion without first clarifying what process they will use – and then often have a very inefficient conversation.
For example:- ‘Is this for discussion, information or decision?
- Who is leading the session?
- How long are we allowing?
- What role does each other person here need to play?
- What is the output ? How will we create / capture this?
- Do we need everyone who is here for this (and if not, maybe we don’t do this right now at all)’ etc..
Remember, How is not ‘how will we solve this’.
That comes once the Contracting is complete.
Was it worth investing an extra 3 minutes to read that PS additional content from Sheena?
It’s a Yes from me!
Option A: Find a stretch tactic, or:
Option B: Make downsides less relevant by upping a high value strength
We listen. We understand. We are confident that we can create a bespoke solution
that really adds to your bottom line.
