Faculty Session Agreement

Heads of Terms

This document sets out how we’d like to work together on a session for our ICF Level 2 coach education programme.

We’ve tried to write this in plain English. It’s a heads-of-terms document, not a 60-page contract. We’d rather a short document that both sides actually read than a long one that sits in a drawer. If anything here doesn’t work for you, please tell us and we’ll talk it through.

1. What we’re asking you to do

You will design and deliver a 3-hour session on [topic] as part of our ICF Level 2 coach education programme. We’d like the session to use the TBR structure where possible. If you’d prefer a different approach, please discuss it with us so we can check it will sit well alongside the other sessions on the programme.

We have a house style for our programme called Training from the BACK of the Room (TBR). It keeps the learner experience consistent across all our sessions. We’re not religious about it though. If you have a different approach you trust, we’d rather you use what works for you than force a structure you don’t believe in.

2. What we’ll pay you

We will pay you £300 plus VAT for the first delivery of your 3-hour session (£100 per hour of delivery time). Payment will be made within 14 days of the session, against your invoice.

The initial fee covers preparation of the agreed first-version session materials and up to two planning or review conversations between us. Substantial additional design, rework, new materials or accreditation-related revisions beyond this will be discussed and agreed separately.

We are not able to pay you for the time spent designing the session.

Future fees. The £300 plus VAT fee applies only to the first delivery of the session. If the session is delivered again, refreshed significantly, recorded for use beyond the current cohort (see section 7), delivered by another faculty member or becomes part of a wider thematic strand within the programme, we will agree the fee and any usage terms before that use is confirmed.

If we cannot agree a fee for future deliveries or uses, either side can end the arrangement under section 10.

We want to be honest about money up front. We’re a small company in the early stages of this programme and we can only commit to paying for delivery. The figure below covers the first delivery of the session. We can’t pay for your design time, but the things in sections 4, 5 and 6 (ownership of materials, the right to teach the session elsewhere and help with CCE accreditation) are how we try to make the arrangement worth your while overall.

3. Sessions, first refusal and availability

We can’t promise a fixed number of sessions. Sessions only run when learners enrol on the programme. We’ll give you as much notice of upcoming dates as we can.

First refusal. For any future delivery of this session, or any substantially similar session based materially on your materials, we will offer it to you first before approaching another faculty member. If you’re unavailable for a specific date, that does not remove your first-refusal right for later dates.

Cancellation or postponement by us. If we cancel or postpone a confirmed session within 14 days of the agreed delivery date, the delivery fee remains payable to you unless we both agree a replacement date. Outside the 14-day window, no fee is payable for a cancelled or postponed session.

Inability to deliver on your side. If you are unable to deliver a confirmed session because of illness or circumstances reasonably beyond your control, we will discuss in good faith whether the session can be rescheduled, adapted or delivered through another agreed arrangement. No penalty will apply on either side.

This is the bit that worries most specialists, so we want to be straight about it. We can’t promise volume because we can’t yet predict it. What we can promise is that whenever your session runs, you get first refusal. We also want to be clear about what happens if a date moves or one of us can’t make it on the day.

4. Who owns the session (IP)

What each of us brings. Each of us retains ownership of the materials, methods, frameworks, templates, tools, examples, prompts, brand assets, programme structures and know-how we bring into this collaboration. Nothing in this agreement transfers that pre-existing know-how to the other side.

Choosing a case before we start. Before design work begins, we will agree which of the three cases below applies to this session. Programme integration on our side (feedback, house-style adaptation, quality review or ICF mapping) does not by itself move the session into case 4(b); we will only treat it as jointly created where we are genuinely co-creating substantial content, exercises, models or materials together.

The three cases:

(a) You build it on your own. If you arrive with a session you’ve already designed, or you design it without material input from us, you own it. You give us a non-exclusive licence to deliver it as part of our programme for as long as we have a working relationship. If our relationship ends, our licence ends as set out in section 10.

(b) We build it together. If David or Linda (or both) make a substantial contribution to the design of new content (exercises, models, materials or significant content beyond house-style integration), the session is jointly owned. That means:

You can teach it elsewhere whenever you like, on your own terms.
We can keep delivering it as part of our programme, including by training another faculty member to teach it, subject to the future-fees provision in section 2.
Neither of us needs the other’s permission to use the materials.
Neither of us will claim sole authorship.

(c) We build it ourselves and you only deliver it. If we provide a fully built session and you simply deliver it, we own it. You’re paid the delivery fee and that’s the deal.

Intellectual property is where most of these arrangements go wrong, usually because no one talked about it. We want to be very clear. We also want to distinguish between what each of us brings into the room and what we create together in it.

5. Teaching the session elsewhere

We want you to be able to use your expertise widely.

Under case 4(a), you can teach your session anywhere, anytime. We just ask that you don’t actively market it to people who are currently enrolled on our programme.
Under case 4(b), the same applies. You’re free to teach the joint session under your own brand elsewhere.
We won’t claim exclusivity over your topic, your reputation or your client base.

In return, please don’t repackage our wider course content (the programme materials beyond your session, our learner workbooks, our brand assets) into a competing offer. Your session is yours or ours jointly. Our programme as a whole is ours.

We don’t want to lock you in. You’ll bring expertise we don’t have and that expertise should belong to you in your wider career. Our main concern is protecting the programme we’ve committed to deliver to our learners, not stopping you from being a successful trainer.

6. ICF CCE accreditation

ICF requires CCE accreditation to be applied for by the organisation offering the programme. That means:

For our programme. We will apply, in the name of David Lowe Coach Limited, for CCE approval covering our delivery of the session. We’ll do the paperwork and cover the application admin.
For your own teaching elsewhere, where case 4(a) or 4(b) applies. If you’d like your own deliveries of the session to count for CCE under your name or your organisation, you may submit your own application to ICF. We’re happy to share the materials we prepare for our application (competency mapping, learning outcomes, structure notes) so you can re-use them in yours. The application fee and admin for your version would be down to you.
Where case 4(c) applies. The session is ours. Only David Lowe Coach Limited will apply for CCE approval of it. Because the content isn’t yours, please don’t submit a separate CCE application for it.

We won’t object to you applying for your own CCE approval of the same session content, provided we’ve agreed in advance that case 4(a) or 4(b) applies.

Obtaining CCE accreditation for a session can be a lengthy process, but it is worthwhile. ICF accredits CCE programmes at the level of the provider organisation, not the content itself. Subject to the IP case that applies, we’re also happy for you to seek your own CCE approval if you’d like one for your own deliveries elsewhere.

7. Recordings

By default, sessions are not recorded. Recording is permitted in the following cases, each subject to written agreement in advance:

For the current cohort to review. Where you or we wish to record the live session so that the learners who attended can re-watch it, the recording will be accessible only to enrolled learners in that cohort, learners will be asked not to redistribute it and the recording will be deleted at the end of the cohort or after a retention period agreed in advance.
For internal quality assurance or accreditation evidence. We will agree the scope, access and retention period. Recordings made for this purpose will not be shared with learners or used for marketing.

Any other use of recordings (replay for future cohorts, asynchronous learning hours, marketing, faculty training, sale or distribution) requires separate written agreement and, where appropriate, a separate fee.

Recordings are the place where a few minutes of footage can have a long afterlife, so we want to be specific about what’s allowed by default and what needs a fresh conversation. Worth knowing: ICF accreditation hours require live attendance, so a recording can’t substitute for a learner being in the room.

8. Quality, feedback and rework

We may share feedback after sessions, from learners and from us. You can ask us for feedback whenever you’d like.

Quality rework. You decide when your session is ready for delivery and you decide when it’s good enough. We may share feedback or suggest improvements; the editorial call is yours.

Compliance rework. Changes required by ICF for the session to qualify for Level 2 or CCE accreditation under our programme are an exception. Reasonable changes of that kind are included in the initial fee. Substantial accreditation-related rework (for example, redesigning a major exercise or replacing significant content) falls under the “substantial additional design” provision in section 2 and will be discussed and agreed separately.

Feedback works both ways and we want it to feel like a craft conversation rather than an inspection. We expect you to be brilliant. We also expect to keep improving the session over time, together. We’ve split out two different kinds of rework because they have different power dynamics.

9. Talking about the collaboration

Where you design or deliver a session, we will agree suitable public wording to describe your role and the collaboration. You may refer to the collaboration in your own marketing using the agreed wording, provided this doesn’t imply wider endorsement or accreditation beyond the agreed session.

The first fee doesn’t cover the full design effort, so part of the value for you is the visibility of contributing to an ICF-related coach education programme. We want that to work for you, with wording both sides are comfortable with.

10. If either of us wants to stop

Either side can end the arrangement with 60 days’ written notice. During the notice period:

We’ll honour any sessions already in the diary, unless you’d rather hand them off.
If you’ve co-built a session with us (case 4(b)), our right to keep delivering it continues after the arrangement ends, as set out in section 4, subject to the future-fees provision in section 2.
If you built it alone (case 4(a)), our licence to deliver it ends when the notice period ends. We’ll remove your materials from our active programme.
If we built it (case 4(c)), nothing changes; the materials stay with us.

When the arrangement ends, neither side owes the other anything for what didn’t happen. We won’t bill you for any design time we put in. You won’t bill us for sessions that never ran.

The thing that keeps us awake at night is the scenario where we’ve committed to learners, the session has been co-built and the specialist walks away. The thing that probably keeps you awake at night is being trapped in an arrangement that no longer suits you. A 60-day notice period is our attempt at a fair compromise between the two.

11. Things we both promise

We’ll treat each other’s confidential information (learner details, business plans, unpublished materials) as confidential.
We’ll act professionally with learners and with each other.
We’ll raise concerns directly and early, rather than letting things fester.

Three sentences is plenty for a relationship built on goodwill.