What is our contract with ourselves, how clear is it and how well do we honour it?

In coaching a core part of the work with someone is called contracting. Contracting happens at every stage of the work. Yes, it involves the formal contractual agreement for working together but it is also an ongoing process of establishing how we are working together.

In the beginning contracting helps create shared expectations: what are the values we need to uphold working together, what do we want and need from one another for this to be a success, how will we know if this isn’t working and how do we want to be in that case? 

In this way it is no different to any other contract, however in coaching contracting is also an ongoing process. Each time we come together for a coaching session we ask what are we here to do today? What makes that important? In the time we have, what do we want the outcome to be? How will we know we have achieved that? How will we do that together? 

Throughout the session we may revisit that contract: Where are we now? What does that mean for the rest of the time we have today? 

We will also check back on the overall contract: how are we progressing? What is going well? What would make it even better? 

And then my coach asked me what my contract with myself looked like….

Obviously, I didn’t have one, not explicitly but I realised, I probably was following one, if implicitly. Given navigating expectations is something I write about a lot, a contract with ourselves struck me as a great way of being clear and explicit on what we want to commit to in our lives, what matters to us, and how we want to show up and hold ourselves accountable to that. 

For me, a contract provides the value of being a point of reference in the moments when I feel lost or unsure. It reminds me what I expect from myself and what good enough really is in the moments I may not feel good enough.

So what would your contract to you say?

Contracting is an ongoing process

There is a joke that every challenge a coach brings to supervision can in part be resolved by contracting. The issue at hand touches on a grey area of expectations and boundaries that were not clarified or that we weren’t even aware of at the beginning.

Equally everything can never be covered in the first bit of contracting. We cannot know what we do not know. 

With yourself, how would you revisit your contract with yourself? How frequently is valuable to you, and equally does not undermine your contract?

The consequences of contracts

While a lovely idea, part of the purpose of a contract is that it is an agreement between multiple parties, which means the only person to enforce a contract with you is you, sort of.

Like any contract, not upholding your contract with you will have consequences as much as upholding it will. So what makes it important? What will be the result of honouring your contract with you? What will be the impact if you do not commit to it?

Often the value of a contract is that it makes things, including expectations, explicit. Both the things you will do and the lines you will not cross. What are they for you? 

Of the things that you would include in your contract, how clear are they to you? How explicit are they? Now they are clearer, what feels different? 

Going back to the ‘sort of’ in our contract being only with ourselves, often the clarity of making it explicit can be enough to commit us to something, but to build on that who can you share it with that would make your contract feel even more real to you?

What would it be if we all were clear on the commitments to ourselves that really matter and explicit to ourselves in our commitment to them?

Questions to help create your own contract

What are you committing to by making this contract?

What do you want the impact of these commitments to be for you?

What values do you want to honour while fulfilling this contract with you? 

What does the contract need to include that means regardless of how things go you would be at peace with yourself? 

How will you know what you are committing to is working? 

How clear and explicit are these commitments? 

What may get in the way of this contract working?

How will you know this is not working and what do you want to do in that case? 

Who can you share your contract with?

How will you continue to contract and recontract with you in a way that honours the contract as much as it honours that things change?