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Executive Coaching Program Template

Five documents and three sheets built so every piece of information has a direction, a default and a named person who decides whether it moves.

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What you get

Pack of 8 files: 5 documents, 3 spreadsheets

Executive Coaching Program Template
  • Disclosure MatrixDocument
  • Goal RegisterSpreadsheet
  • Session LogSpreadsheet
  • Stakeholder Feedback TrackerSpreadsheet
  • Engagement AgreementDocument
  • Development PlanDocument
  • Session StructureDocument
  • Progress SummaryDocument
RiverExecutive Coaching Program Template

Disclosure Matrix  ·  Thornfield Instruments  ·  Marisa Vail, operations director, eight sessions over six months

Every clause on page one is row three of eleven

#WhatDirectionDefaultWho decides
1Whether sessions are happening, and whenCoach to sponsorSharedNobody. Automatic
2The agreed goals, as written in the registerCoach to sponsorSharedMarisa drafts them
3What is said in a sessionCoach to sponsorNeverMarisa, in writing, per item
4The coach's own read on progressCoach to sponsorNever separatelyOnly inside a released summary
5Anything the sponsor tells the coachSponsor to coachRepeated to MarisaNobody. Automatic
6The sponsor's written brief for the engagementSponsor to coachMarisa gets a copyNobody. Automatic
7The 360 report the sponsor commissionedSponsor to coachMarisa holds it tooMarisa releases extracts
8What a stakeholder said in a mid-point interviewStakeholder to coachAggregated onlyThreshold of three
9Which stakeholders were interviewedCoach to bothSharedAgreed at session one
10The coach's notes and the data behind themCoach to MarisaOn request, as a copyMarisa, any time
11Risk of serious harm, or a legal requirementCoach to whoeverDisclosedThe coach, told in advance

Row 5 is the one that ends engagements and it appears in no template anywhere. The sponsor rings in week nine and says, between us, she is on a performance plan. There is no between us. Anything the sponsor tells the coach gets repeated to the coachee, and the sponsor is told that at the outset so the call either does not happen or happens knowing it will be repeated.

Row 3 is the whole of page one's confidentiality clause. It is correct and it is one row. The other ten are the ones nobody writes down, and eight of them concern information moving toward the coach rather than away from her.

Eleven flows, four parties, and only two of them need anybody's permission at the moment they move. Everything else was decided in the three-way session in week one.

Search this and the confidentiality clause is already written for you. The coachee is the client, session content never reaches the sponsor, the sponsor gets attendance and progress against goals, and the exceptions are consent, legal compulsion and risk of serious harm. That is a genuine standard and most agreements meet it. It governs one direction between two parties, and a coaching engagement has four parties and information moving both ways. This pack governs one coachee. Coaching a whole team as one client needs its own agreement and its own commitment discipline.

The flow that damages engagements runs the other way. A sponsor rings to say, between us, she is on a performance plan. Nothing on page one covers it, and the coach holds something the coachee does not know exists. Article 14 of the UK GDPR settles it. A controller who takes personal data from anyone but the subject has one month to say what it is, where it came from and who else sees it. The duty falls away where the subject already knows, and being in the room is how they know.

Stakeholder feedback needs the same care. Six interviews, and a theme only one person holds identifies them by arithmetic, so the tracker sets a threshold below which nothing gets reported. Then the progress summary is drafted by the coachee, released by the coachee, and it asks the sponsor what they agreed to change too. A summary reporting only on the coachee is a report card. Set the goals against a structured assessment debrief.

Six goals, the person who would notice each one, and the theme that stayed unreported

Every goal names the behaviour somebody else would see and the person who would see it. Stakeholder themes below the threshold of three raters stay out of the report, because a theme one person holds names them.

Executive Coaching Program Template
RiverGoal Register

Goal Register

Fictional precision instruments manufacturer, Thornfield. Six goals, each with a baseline from the 360.

RefGoal, as Marisa wrote itObservable behaviourWho would noticeBaseline
G-01Stop taking back decisions I have delegatedHer four direct reports close items without escalating. Counted in the weekly ops logHer four directs11 escalations in March, 9 of them reversals
G-02Be readable in the room when I disagreePeople say what they think in her meetings after she has already spokenThe wider ops leadership360 item scored 2.1 of 5, lowest of 38
G-03Get to the point in the first two minutesBoard papers open with the ask. The chair stops asking her what she needsThe chair and the CFO3 of 4 papers rewritten before the Q1 board
G-04Have the difficult conversation inside a weekTwo named performance conversations held, both by 30 JuneMarisa and her sponsorBoth outstanding since November
G-05Improve my executive presenceRewritten as G-02 and G-03. Not a goal on its ownNobody could tell youNo baseline exists
G-06Decide about the group role by SeptemberA decision, communicated. Either answer countsMarisa, and then her sponsorOpen since January

G-05 is in the register on purpose, struck out. Improve my executive presence is the goal every coaching engagement starts with and it cannot be worked on, measured or finished, because nobody can name the behaviour or the person who would notice. Splitting it into readable when disagreeing and to the point in two minutes gives two goals with baselines from the same 360 report.

Every goal has to survive one question: who else would see this change, and how would they see it? Where the answer is nobody, the goal is a feeling. Where the answer is a name and a countable behaviour, the sponsor can evaluate the engagement without ever hearing what happened in a session.

Marisa wrote every line in the first column. The coach wrote the third and fourth with her, and neither of them wrote the fifth: the baselines all come from the 360 and the ops log.

RiverSession Log

Session Log

Held, attended, and what the sponsor sees. The last column is the only one that ever leaves the room.

#DateHeldGoals workedWhat the sponsor sees
S-0014 AprThree-way, 90 minContractingHe was there. He signed the matrix
S-0128 AprYesG-01, G-02Held. Nothing else
S-0212 MayYesG-02, G-04Held. Nothing else
S-0326 MayCancelled by Marisa, 2 hours noticen/aCancelled and rebooked. Reason not shared
S-03a04 JunYesG-04, G-06Held. Nothing else
S-0418 JunYesG-01, G-03Held. Nothing else
M-0125 JunThree-way review, 60 minAll sixThe released summary, drafted by Marisa

Cancelled and rebooked is shareable. The reason is not. That distinction is worth writing into the agreement, because it is the single most common place a sponsor asks a question the coach should not answer, and answering it once teaches the sponsor to ask again. Attendance is administrative and the reason is session content.

S-00 is a session, it is billed, and it is where the whole engagement gets decided. Ninety minutes with all three people in the room, walking the disclosure matrix line by line and signing it. It also discharges the sponsor's briefing obligation cleanly, because the coachee already has the information rather than being told about it afterwards.

Goals worked stays in the log and never travels. It is there so the coach can see which goals have had no airtime by session five, which is the most useful pattern in the sheet.

RiverStakeholder Feedback

Stakeholder Feedback Tracker

Six interviews at the mid-point. Two themes reported, one held back, and the reason is arithmetic.

ThemeRaised byCountReported?Why
Decisions get reversed after the meeting that made them4 of 64Yes, aggregatedAbove the threshold. Cannot be traced to one person
Hard to read her position until she has decided5 of 65Yes, aggregatedAbove the threshold. Matches G-02's baseline
Board papers have improved noticeably since April3 of 63Yes, aggregatedAt the threshold. Progress against G-03
Specific concern about one named succession decision1 of 61NoOne person. Reporting it names them
Doubt about whether she wants the group role at all2 of 62NoBelow three. Both raters are identifiable from context

The threshold is three and it is not a courtesy. A theme held by one person, reported to that person's boss, is that person's opinion with a name attached whether or not the name is written down. Six stakeholders were interviewed and everybody knows who they were, so a theme of one is an identification by arithmetic and the interview programme stops working the moment anybody realises it.

The two unreported themes are not lost, they are redirected. The coach tells the raters what the threshold means before the interview, and where something below it genuinely matters, the answer is to help that person say it themselves rather than to launder it through the coach.

The threshold also keeps a released summary releasable. A copy of personal data has to stop short of adversely affecting the rights and freedoms of others, and one identifiable rater's opinion is exactly that boundary.

RiverProgress Summary

Progress Summary, released 25 June

Drafted by Marisa. Nothing in it the coach added without her reading it first.

GoalWhere it startedWhere it isEvidence
G-0111 escalations in March, 9 reversals4 escalations in June, 1 reversalWeekly ops log, shared with the sponsor already
G-02360 item at 2.1 of 5Moving. Five of six stakeholders still raise itMid-point interviews, aggregated
G-033 of 4 papers rewritten pre-board0 of 3 rewritten since AprilThree stakeholders raised the improvement unprompted
G-04Two conversations outstanding since NovemberBoth held, 6 and 19 JuneMarisa's own statement. Sponsor can confirm outcomes
G-06Open since JanuaryOn track for a September decisionNo evidence to give yet, and that is fine
SponsorAgreed on 14 Apr: stop routing operational escalations back to Marisa, and give her the group role timetable by 31 MayFirst one held. Timetable still not issued, 25 days lateMarisa's diary and the absence of a timetable

The last row is why this document is evaluable and a report card is not. The sponsor agreed to two things in the three-way session, in writing, with dates. One happened and one did not, and the one that did not is blocking G-06 directly. Every progress summary on the market reports on the coachee only, which invites the sponsor to read coaching as something being done to somebody else.

Marisa drafted every row and then released it. The coach's contribution is the evidence column and the challenge on G-02, and Marisa read both before the sponsor did. Releasing it is a decision she takes at a moment, recorded with a date, and it applies to this document rather than to every future one.

Nothing here reports what was said in a session. Every claim rests on the ops log, the aggregated interviews, or a statement Marisa chose to make.

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What's in the pack

01

Disclosure Matrix

Eleven information flows across four parties, each with a direction, a default, the person who decides whether it moves, and the exception that overrides it.

02

Engagement Agreement

The three-party agreement with the matrix attached as a schedule, the coachee's right to a copy of what the coach holds, and what happens if the coachee leaves mid-engagement.

03

Goal Register

Every goal with the observable behaviour it produces, the named person who would notice it, its baseline from the assessment data, and the session it was last worked in.

04

Session Log

Held, attended, cancelled and rebooked, plus the goals worked in each session. The last column marks exactly what a sponsor is entitled to see.

05

Stakeholder Feedback Tracker

Themes with the rater count behind each one and the attribution threshold that decides whether it gets reported at all. Run the round itself off a structured interview programme.

06

Development Plan

What the coachee is working on, what the organisation agreed to change, and both sets of dates. The longer version, where each goal names the record its progress is read from, is the development plan pack.

07

Progress Summary

The releasable document, drafted by the coachee, carrying a standing section on what the sponsor agreed to do differently and whether it happened.

08

Session Structure

The eight-session shape, the three-way sessions at the start and mid-point, and what each one is for. Fitting it inside the practice's own session ceiling is the coaching business and client pipeline pack.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open in River, or take it blank

    Open the pack in River and send the assessment reports with the sponsor's brief, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.

  2. 2

    Walk the matrix in the room

    Three-way session one, line by line, all three people present. Sign it. Everything difficult later gets decided here instead of in the moment.

  3. 3

    Give every goal a noticer

    Name the behaviour somebody else would see and the person who would see it. A goal nobody could notice is a feeling.

  4. 4

    Let the coachee draft it

    The progress summary is theirs to write and theirs to release, and it asks the sponsor what they agreed to change too.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. The zip is Word documents and CSV sheets, no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: the agent reads the assessment reports and the sponsor's brief, then turns the development themes into goals with a named noticer and a baseline. The rest sit in the template library.

What format are the downloaded files?

Five Word documents and three CSV sheets in one zip. The sheets carry the columns that matter: observable behaviour, who would notice, baseline, rater count, reported yes or no. Open them in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, and the agreement is a .docx.

Why repeat back what the sponsor tells me?

Because holding it is what breaks the engagement. The coachee finds out eventually, and the day they do, every session before it gets reinterpreted. Telling the sponsor in week one that anything they say gets repeated means the call either does not happen or happens honestly.

The sponsor commissioned the 360 and already has it. Does confidentiality apply?

The report is not the issue, what the coach does with it is. Under Article 15 of the UK GDPR the coachee can ask for a copy of the personal data the coach holds, its source, and who it has been or will be disclosed to. Answer that in the matrix up front.

Why a threshold of three on stakeholder feedback?

Because everybody knows who was interviewed. A theme held by one of six people, reported to that person's boss, is an identification by arithmetic even with no name attached. Above three it is a pattern. Below three it stays out, and the rater is told that before they speak. The mid-engagement re-ask is a mini 360 built from these goals.

What does the sponsor actually get, then?

Attendance, the goals in the coachee's own words, the released progress summary against measurable baselines, and a standing section on what the sponsor agreed to change. That is more than most sponsors get now, and none of it is session content.

What if the coachee leaves the company mid-engagement?

The agreement decides it in advance: remaining sessions, who pays for them, and what happens to the notes. Coaching a departing executive on the sponsor's budget is a conversation to have at signature rather than in the week it happens. The statement of work template handles the commercial half of that.

Sources

  1. legislation.gov.ukRegulation (EU) 2016/679, Article 14 (opens in a new tab)
  2. legislation.gov.ukRegulation (EU) 2016/679, Article 15 (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

LinkedInGitHubX

Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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Decide the flows in week one

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or send River the assessment reports and the sponsor's brief and get goals with a named noticer and a real baseline.

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