08/09/2026
Three-cornered contracting with executives
The most underestimated skill in executive coaching is contracting.
The classic three-cornered contract (English, 1975) — coach, client, sponsor — looks simple on a diagram. In practice with executives, each corner is itself a system:
🔺 The client is also a leader, with their own team holding expectations of them
🔺 The sponsor is rarely one person — it's HR, the line manager, sometimes the board
🔺 The coach is the third party, accountable to a professional body, ethics codes, and their own supervision
The interesting work happens in the gaps. When the sponsor's stated goal contradicts the client's actual development edge. When confidentiality bumps against organisational reporting. When the contract you wrote at the start no longer fits the work that's emerged.
The TAO2 bootcamp — coming to Physis Scotland in Edinburgh this October — dedicates a full module to this: the three-cornered contract, psychological distance, and the contracting hierarchy as the ethical scaffold of executive work.
📍 Bootcamp: 5–9 October 2026 · Edinburgh
🔗 Online group supervision: 20 Oct, 10 Nov, 24 Nov, 15 Dec 2026, 5 Jan 2027
📍 Accreditation workshop: 12–13 January 2027 · Edinburgh
£3,895 · intactacademy.com/planning
Planning This is an overview of the planning of all our programs with the option to register. You can select the program by clicking on “show”. If you scroll to the bottom of the program page there is an option to register. Some programs don’t have dates planned yet. But if you can find 8 or