How I Hold Confidentiality
The things you tell me stay with me. Here is exactly what that means.
Most of the people I work with have no one in the building they can safely tell. When you are the person everyone else brings things to, there is nowhere to set your own down.
So before you decide whether to work with me, I would like you to know precisely how I hold what you bring. Trust is not something you should have to extend on faith (even though I am a rabbi!).
What stays between us
What you say to me in our sessions stays with me. Not summarized to your board, not hinted at to your chair. I am bound by the International Coaching Federation’s Code of Ethics and the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Code of Ethics, and both require confidentiality. I also hold to something older: four decades of people telling a rabbi the thing they had told no one else.
Your diagnostic belongs to you. Your answers and the written map that follows are yours. The map is written so it can be shared with a board chair without exposing you, but whether it’s ever shared is your decision, never mine.
When your organization is paying Many leaders I work with are sponsored by a congregation, a board, or an employer. When someone else is paying, the three of us sign an agreement before we begin: you, me, and the sponsor. You’ll know exactly what I report, to whom, and how often, before you’ve said a word to me. You are never surprised.
Most engagements are developmental. The sponsor receives a short report at set intervals: how you’re engaging with the work, whether I think it’s helping, and how they could support you better. It never contains anything you said. No quotes, no session details, nothing about health or family.
Some engagements are built around named goals, and then assessing progress is the work. An employer may bring me in over a specific performance concern, or a senior rabbi or board may ask a leader to meet particular goals. Then assessing progress against those goals is the work, and the agreement says so in plain language before we start: what’s measured, who receives it, and when.
When I work with you and your board together
The leader is my client. What the leader tells me stays with me, and what the board tells me does not travel back to the leader. I am not a channel between you. What I carry between the two sides is structure, never anyone’s private words.
In this work I do not evaluate the leader for the board. If a board wants that, it’s a different engagement with its own agreement.
If you and your board ever come to want genuinely different things, I will say so in the room, and we’ll decide together what continues.
More on how I hold both sides →
The tools I use, and what they see
We meet on Zoom. Zoom states that it does not use customer audio, video, chat, or transcripts to train AI models.
I take notes with Granola, but only if you agree. I’ll ask before our first session, it’s noted in our contract, and saying no costs you nothing. Granola writes without keeping audio. What it produces is encrypted, stored in the United States, and not used to train AI, and I’ve turned off Granola’s own use of my data as well.
I also keep a Zoom transcript, so I can be with you while we talk instead of writing, and so I can return to what you actually said before we meet again. No one else sees it.
Then I delete the originals. Once I’ve taken what the work needs, I strip out anything that could identify you and delete the transcript and notes. What remains could belong to anyone. You can ask me to delete anything of yours at any time, and I will. If you’d rather I keep no transcript or notes at all, tell me. It changes nothing about our work.
Scheduling is through Calendly, which holds only your name, your email, your cell phone number, the time you chose, and your time zone.
What I will tell you that most coaches leave out
Coaching is not legally privileged. Unlike your attorney or physician, a coach can be compelled by a court to disclose. And although I am a rabbi, our coaching work is not covered by the legal protection for confidential communication with clergy. It has never happened to me, and I would resist it, but you should know before you decide what to bring.
There are limits on confidentiality. If I am subpoenaed or ordered by a court, I am required to testify, and that can include what I know about illegal activity. And I am a mandatory reporter: if I learn of abuse or neglect of a child or an elder, a risk that someone will harm themselves, or a threat to someone’s life, I am required to report it. That is the entire list.
I sometimes consult other coaching professionals for supervision and ethics. When I do, it’s anonymous and hypothetical, with nothing that could point back to you.
The International Coaching Federation may verify my coaching hours. If you agree, they receive only your name, your contact information, and the dates we worked together. You may decline, and it changes nothing.
How I keep records — including the part about AI
I keep records of our work for three years, as my credentialing body requires, in a place I control.
I use AI tools in my practice for research and for preparing materials. Beyond the two tools named above, no identifying client material is ever entered into an AI system. Your originals, including agreements, intake, invoices, and correspondence, live in a sealed archive that no AI tool can read. When I prepare with any kind of assistance, I work from a separate file I have stripped by hand of anything that could identify you. When I’m unsure whether a detail is too specific, I make it less specific. The trail never leads back to a real person.
Discretion isn’t my policy. It was my profession.
If you have a question I haven’t answered here
Ask it, before we begin, in the middle, or afterward. Confidentiality isn’t a clause you sign once and forget. You can raise it at any moment, and I’ll give you a straight answer.
The privacy policy for this website is on its own page. Privacy Policy →