A coach spends 11.6 hours a week in sessions on average, with a dozen clients, according to the International Coaching Federation’s global study published in 2025. Those are the hours when a coach is at their best: the ones where a well-put question gets someone moving.
They are also the hours nobody else sees anything of. And that is as it should be.
The coach’s paradox
To find clients, you have to show how you work. But a coach works within a confidential setting, and that confidentiality is no detail: it is what allows the client to speak. The profession’s codes of ethics make it an obligation.
Hence the paradox. The most convincing thing you have cannot go out as it is. And what you post instead, general advice written on a Sunday evening, looks like what everyone else posts.
The way out is not to choose between the two. It is to separate, within a session, what belongs to your client from what belongs to you.
What can leave a session, and what stays in it
| What belongs to you | What belongs to your client |
|---|---|
| Your method, explained in general terms | Their situation, even without their name |
| A question you often ask | What they answered |
| A mistake you see in many clients | Their doubts, their emotions, their decisions |
| A principle, a rule, an image you use | Their face and their voice |
| An answer to a question of a general kind | Anything that would make them recognisable |
The left-hand column is your material. The right-hand one is posted only with the person’s explicit agreement, for each clip, and they can refuse without having to explain themselves.
A simple test: if your client came across the post, would they recognise their session? If so, they must have said yes beforehand.
Four sources of calls with no dilemma
You do not have to start with one-to-one sessions. Other calls hold the same expertise with far less intimacy.
Discovery calls
A prospect explains what they are looking for, you explain how you work. Your answers there are general by nature: it is your method, told to someone who does not know it. Their agreement is still needed to record, and you keep only your own answers.
Group sessions and Q&As
A workshop, a masterclass, an hour of questions open to your clients. The participants know there are several of them, the questions are asked in front of everyone, and your answers are already addressed to an audience.
Conversations with peers
An exchange with another coach, an interview, a supervision session described without any identifiable case. There you talk about the profession, not about a client.
The session offered to a volunteer
Some clients gladly agree to a session serving as an example, sometimes with pride. Ask them in advance, offer to let them see each clip before it is posted, and abide by what they answer.
Asking for agreement without damaging the relationship
The request is only awkward when it arrives badly. Three principles.
Before, never during. Ask the question outside the session, in writing or at the very start, before you record anything at all. A client caught off guard in the middle of an exchange cannot really refuse.
Two agreements, not one. The first to record. The second to post a clip in which they appear, speak or are quoted, once they have seen it. Make it clear that the first does not imply the second.
A refusal with no consequence. Say it in so many words: “If you’d rather not, that changes nothing about our work together.” And keep your word.
A wording that works: “I record some of my sessions to make short videos where I answer general questions. You wouldn’t be seen or heard in them. Is that all right with you for today?”
We have gathered other wordings, and what to do when someone hesitates, in Recording a video call: how to tell your guests.
What a coach’s short should show
Not your client’s breakthrough: yours, that is, the professional move that made it possible.
- The question you ask. “What would you do if you were sure you could not fail?” A strong question fits in ten seconds and makes whoever watches it think.
- The reframe. “You’re talking to me about motivation. I think it’s a question of priorities.” It is your way of seeing things, and it is what people buy from you.
- The common mistake. The one you find in one client after another, said without pointing at anyone.
- The rule. A short principle you often repeat.
What they have in common is what we describe in How to choose video clips: each one stands on its own, without the slightest piece of information about the person opposite.
Why video, for a coach
Because people choose a coach for their manner as much as for their method. A text says what you think. A video shows how you listen, how you rephrase, at what pace you speak. That is what a future client is trying to find out before booking a first call.
Still, filming yourself alone in front of a camera is, for many people, an ordeal. We talk about it in Camera shy: why it happens, and how to post anyway. A call gets round it: there you are talking to someone, not to a lens.
What Dailies does, and what it leaves to you
Dailies is a Chrome extension that records the calls you hold on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or Zoom, in French or in English, and cuts captioned vertical shorts from them. Its interface is in French. Two things matter for a coach.
- One switch blurs your guests and disguises their voice in your shorts.
- You choose what goes out. Dailies suggests up to eight passages per call; you download the ones you want to post, and nothing is posted by itself.
The tool does not decide for you what is confidential. Drawing that line remains your job.
Key takeaways
- In a session, your method belongs to you; your client’s story belongs to them.
- Start with the least intimate calls: discovery, group, peers.
- Two separate agreements: one to record, one to post what shows or quotes the person.
- A good coach’s short shows your question, your reframe or your rule, never the client.
Sources
- International Coaching Federation, 2025 Global Coaching Study, Executive Summary, 2025.