Executive Coaching Agreement Template
An executive coaching agreement has three parties, not two: the Employer sponsors and pays for the engagement, but the Coach and the Coachee hold the confidentiality of what is actually discussed. Download the ready-to-fill template below, or read the field-by-field checklist first.
Download the Executive Coaching Agreement
A complete, ready-to-fill PDF — 11 clauses, blanks for every detail, and a signature block for each party. Free, no email, no account. Read it and adapt it before you use it; the cover page explains what it can and cannot do for you.
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This is a template, not legal advice
This document is a general-purpose template provided for information only. It is not legal advice, it does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and nobody has reviewed it against your situation.
Laws differ by country, state and province, and they change. A clause that is standard in one place can be unenforceable — or illegal — in another. Terms that are ordinary between two businesses can be void in a consumer or employment context.
Read every clause before you use it, fill in every blank, and delete anything that does not apply. For anything high-value, unusual, or that you could not afford to lose a dispute over, have a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction review it before it is signed.
What to include in an executive coaching agreement
These are the fields and clauses an executive coaching agreement needs. Leaving one out doesn’t necessarily void the agreement, but each gap is a spot where the Coach, the Coachee and the Employer can end up disagreeing about what was actually promised.
All three parties
Full legal names for the Coach, the Coachee (the executive being coached), and the Employer — plus the name and title of the Employer's authorized representative who signs on its behalf.
Coaching objectives
The development goals the engagement is built around, and how they were identified (e.g. agreed at an initial session, informed by a 360 review).
Engagement term and session cadence
Start date, total length of the engagement, how many sessions per period, session length, and format (video, in person, phone).
What gets reported to the employer — and what does not
A named, closed list: attendance and completion, high-level progress against objectives, and whether the engagement ended early. Session content itself is excluded by name.
Who pays
A clause stating explicitly that the Employer, not the Coachee, is billed and pays — and that the Coachee has no payment obligation.
Assessment and materials ownership
Who owns a 360-degree feedback report or personal development plan if one is used, and whether the Employer can see it only with the Coachee's consent.
Not-therapy scope limitation
A statement that coaching is not therapy, counselling, or licensed mental health treatment, and what happens if the Coach thinks the Coachee needs that instead.
How the engagement ends
Notice period to end it, what happens to fees already owed, and confirmation the Coachee can stop attending even if the Employer wants the engagement to continue.
Signatures from all three parties
The Coach, the Coachee, and the Employer's authorized representative all sign. It isn't binding on all three until each has.
Three parties, one confidentiality line: why this isn’t a standard coaching contract
A general coaching agreement is a two-party document: the person being coached is also the person paying, so there is no tension between who funds the engagement and who controls what gets shared. Executive coaching breaks that assumption. The Employer pays, often a substantial fee over months, but is not the one in the room — the Coachee is. That mismatch between who pays and who participates is exactly what a two-party template has no clause for.
The template above resolves it by making the Employer a full third signatory with its own defined role: it pays under clause 5, it receives the reporting defined in clause 4, and nothing else. It does not attend sessions, does not direct their content, and — this is the clause a lawyer will check first — does not get access to what the Coachee actually says. That confidentiality is stated as a closed list of what the Coach may report (attendance, completion, high-level progress against the agreed objectives) rather than a vague promise of “appropriate updates,” because a vague promise is exactly what gets stretched the first time an Employer asks for more.
The Coachee, in turn, is a real party to the agreement rather than a passive subject of it: the Coachee can end the engagement without the Employer’s agreement, and has no payment obligation at all — that sits entirely with the Employer under clause 5. Getting those roles right is the difference between a document that actually protects the coaching relationship and one that only looks like it does.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating it as a two-party contract with the Employer standing in for the Coachee. The Employer pays and can enforce the business terms, but the actual coaching relationship — and its confidentiality — runs between the Coach and the Coachee. Drop the Coachee as a real signatory and there is no one who can consent to what gets shared, or refuse to.
- Letting the party that pays assume it gets to see what was said. This is the single most common failure point in practice: an Employer who is footing the bill expects a report on what the executive actually disclosed, and a contract that does not draw a hard line here will eventually have that line tested by an Employer asking a Coach directly. Name exactly what is reported — attendance, high-level progress, nothing else — so there is no ambiguity to push against.
- No stated scope boundary between coaching and therapy. Executive coaching sessions surface personal and psychological material anyway; without a clause saying coaching is not licensed treatment and setting out what the Coach does if therapy looks warranted, the engagement drifts into a role the Coach isn't insured or qualified for.
- Silence on who can end the engagement. If only the Employer is named as able to end it, the Coachee has no way out of sessions they no longer want to attend short of simply not showing up — which then reads as a breach instead of what it is.
- No fee-liability separation. If the contract doesn't say plainly that the Coachee has no payment obligation, a Coach chasing an unpaid invoice may end up chasing the Coachee instead of the Employer that actually owes it.
Get your agreement signed
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Not legal advice — for engagements with unusual reporting, IP, or liability terms, have a local attorney review your agreement.