1. Powerful Discovery Questions

A coaching tool can be created around powerful discovery questions that brainstorm or explore possibilities for the client. These deep and open-ended questions help clients explore themselves/particular topics. The goal is to maximise the amount of information and self-learning.

Examples of Powerful Discovery Question Coaching Tools:

• Give your client a Powerful Pondering Questions Worksheet when you start with them.
• Action Brainstorming Worksheet (Free) - What behaviours do and don’t serve your clients as they move towards their goals?
• Career Ideas Exploration Worksheet - This coaching worksheet asks 21 stimulating questions to help clients come up with ideas and rediscover buried career hopes and dreams.

2. An Inquiry or Journaling Prompt

Journaling prompts and coaching inquiries make great exercises for motivation, goal-setting, decision-making and self-discovery. In particular, journaling is great to deeply explore a client’s vision and values, and help a client get super-motivated by aligning their lives with what matters most to them.

Examples of an Inquiry or Journaling Prompt Coaching Exercise:

• Offer your client The Rocking Chair Exercise, to help them envision what they want the rest of their life to be about.
• The “Retirement or Big Birthday Party” or “Newspaper Article Exercise” to help a client hone in on what matters most, and what success looks like or means for them.
• An inquiry to “Describe your ideal day” or an inquiry that asks, “What advice would I give my younger self?”

Learn more about journaling at the International Association of Journal Writing.

3. A Sequence of Questions that Walk your Clients through a Learning Process

This type of coaching exercise helps your clients take action in a particular area of their life. A series of questions and answers that flow from one to the next to build the learning - and usually ending with actions to be taken. This type of coaching worksheet makes great homework! And both coach and client are rewarded when a client's answers are explored more deeply in a following coaching session.

Examples of Sequence of Questions Tools:

• Give your client the Daily Success Habits Exercise to help them develop new supportive habits.
• Delegation Identifier (Business Coaching Tool) helps your clients identify the benefits to them of delegation and 3 actions to get started.
• The Identifying Personal Values Workbook takes your clients through a multi-step process to identify and (importantly) prioritise their top 10 values in life.
• 21 Questions To Extraordinary Goal-Setting (Free)  This free coaching form has a list of 21 coaching questions that lead a client through the process of setting a powerful SMART goal. Alternatively a coach can use these questions for a coaching session or inspiration.

4. Powerful Lists!

Never underestimate the power of list-making to give your clients important insights! This type of coaching worksheet asks clients to make a list , and sometimes review and explore each item on the list for a deeper result. Powerful lists can be used in every area of coaching!

Examples of Powerful List Coaching Tools

• My Favourite Powerful List to give clients is What Makes My Heart Sing? Help clients find more happiness - where they are right now.
• What are you Tolerating? (Free) Do you know what you’re tolerating in your life? When we see a list written down, we have a better understanding of how draining it can be.
• The Love and Loathe List Help a client free up energy, by doing less of what they loathe, and more of what they love.
• Detox Your Relationships Understand who drains you and who inspires you with this list and scoring system. Helps clients spend more time with people who really support them.

5. A Visual or Get Your Clients Drawing!

Using visual coaching tools is a powerful way to help our clients make sense of things. Images access a different part of our brain and can inspire us, help us see patterns, create new links, think about things in a creative new way or angle.

Examples of Visual Coaching Exercises

• Possibly the most powerful example of a visual life coaching tool is the Wheel of Life Template (Free).
• The Life Map is a fabulous coaching exercise for new clients - helping them and you see the key high and lowlights of their life visually.
• There are many other ideas here including asking clients to draw themselves and discussing that, or asking a client to Draw Their Gremlin or Inner Critic and coaching them around it.
• Visuals can also be used to frame things more lightly like in the Eat Your Elephant Tool.

6. A Reframe

A powerful way to ‘shake-up’ a client’s limiting beliefs and patterns is to offer them (or ask them to come up with) a reframe. This is where your client gets to view a problem or situation in a new, unexpected way. Reframes can be turned into powerful coaching tools and exercises that shake people out of habitual and often limiting ways of thinking.

Examples of Coaching Tools that Reframe

• Coaching questions are the easiest way to reframe. A common reframe is to turn what is currently viewed as a "problem" into an "opportunity". You could ask, "Where could this problem become an opportunity - or even the solution?".
• Love Your Weaknesses.  In this tool, the client is asked, "How do your weaknesses serve you?" so they can see their so-called weaknesses in a new, more positive light.
• The Not To Do List turns the idea of a To Do list on its head, helping people achieve success by identifying what NOT to do…
• Another example of this is in the Are You Sitting (TOO) Comfortably? Coaching Exercise. In this life coaching exercise, the client learns that discomfort is good - because it means they are learning. In addition, did you know that doing too much can also be someone's comfort zone?

7. A Story or Metaphor

Stories and metaphors are powerful transformational tools - offering learning in an easy to digest format. In particular for common life challenges, a story or metaphor helps a client feel less alone, may give them ideas to problem solve with - or see an issue in a new light.

Examples of Story or Metaphor Coaching Tools

• The Build a Bridge Exercise! This uses the idea that we don't need to see the other side to take the next step to get clients moving on something they feel stuck on.
• What Do I Need to Let Go Of? There is a buddhist teaching story about how we hold onto things, and how it clouds our mind unnecessarily. This prompts clients to make a list of things they could similarly let go of.
• The Big Rocks, Little Rocks Exercise This powerful metaphor helps people understand that they need to work on their priorities first, or they will fill their lives with minutiae.

8. A Helpful Model, Concept or Technique

There are so many helpful models and concepts out there that offer new ideas, techniques or learning to help people get more done, manage their time better and be happier! Often these come with acronyms, or helpful names.

Examples of Models, Concepts or Techniques

• A common and extremely helpful example which I have shared with many of my clients is The Urgent-Important Matrix. This coaching form helps clients realise that if they focus on the important things, it reduces the number of things that become urgent - and disruptive in our lives
• SMART Goals is extremely popular and helps people create more powerful goals.
• The Spheres of Influence  I love this concept which encourages people to focus on what they can control, and let go of things they can’t...
• The Action Priority Matrix is a fabulous coaching tool to help people focus on the tasks and ideas that give us the most bang for our buck!

10. Informational Handouts/eBooks

Sometimes it can be helpful for us, or our clients, to have a list to refer to, some reading or other reference material around a specific topic. These can be Handouts, Special Reports or Ebooks with useful information to help your clients learn and grow!

Examples of Informational Handouts/eBooks

• The Cognitive Distortions List (Free) This one sider handout outlines the 10 key ways we distort our experience and beliefs with our thinking. It can be a powerful wake-up call for clients - and coaches!
• Values Example List (Free) Sometimes clients get stuck trying to think of "value" words. This is not a "pick list" for clients, instead it supports the coach and client as they go through the values identification process.
• Client Reminder List A short list of Coaching Topics to help the client prepare for their coaching session, and ensure they have something to discuss with you.
• 549 Powerful Coaching Questions! This eBook has 549 coaching questions organized into coaching areas for inspiration and ideas! It’s still our most popular freebie that comes with signing up for our newsletter!

11. The Coaching Quiz

We've all seen and completed quizzes in magazines and books. A coaching quiz can be great to give clients a quick overview of where they are. We need to be careful not to "tell" people who or what they are. Instead the quiz results are simply a way to raise awareness and start a conversation about a particular topic.

Examples of the Coaching Quiz as a tool

• A good example of this is the Motivation Quiz which helps clients understand if they are ready to "do anything" to achieve a goal, only willing to do a little, or in the middle. It includes some helpful tips about how your coach can help you, and the advantages and disadvantages of each motivation level.
• Examples include the Self-Care Quiz This handy coaching quiz raises our clients' self-awareness around their self-care - because sometimes it's the obvious that escapes us! Great for life balance coaching.
• Life Satisfaction Quiz (Free)  This quiz asks clients to rate their satisfaction with different areas of their lives, and then to identify how they would like coaching to help them. This is a great life coaching tool to give prospects or clients when they start out with you.

12. Coaching Activities

This kind of coaching tool is more physical - and may have an active component. Many of these activities are good for groups and workshops, or can be done without paper if needed.

Examples of Coaching Activities

• The  Tic-Tac-Toe Icebreaker Exercise A fun exercise to get people moving and connecting with each other at the beginning of a workshop or training.
• Kindness Bingo is a simple coaching resource to help a client (or group of people) connect with the value of kindness and actually perform random acts of kindness.
• Do Anywhere 5 Things (Free) Gratitude Tool! This simple coaching exercise helps clients identify 5 things to be grateful for - and can be done any time, anywhere.
• We also offer a 21 ½ Workshop Games & Exercises eBook for your workshops, groups and teams.

Here are some Features of our Coaching Tools

We offer a huge selection of ready-to-go career and life coaching tools on specific coaching topics. Because we hear over and over again, "Thank-you so much! You've saved me hours and hours of time!"

We are an approved ICF Business Solutions Partner (International Coach Federation).

The core of our mission is to create the coaching forms you need, so you can focus on getting clients and running your business.

Specifically, our Coaching Tools, Exercises and Graphics:

• Are created by a professional, experienced coach.
• Have a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee!
• Are concise, easy to use and fun!
• Are *Brandable*. Follow the licensing terms and simply add your business name and logo and start using them with clients right away!
• Are mostly in Microsoft Word .docx format. This means you can customise them for your particular niche, add your own insights or easily amend them to fit your style!
• Our tools are specifically designed to help your clients learn, (re)think who they are, connect with what they really want and take action. You get to add value by reviewing and discussing the client output and delving for deeper learnings and more meaningful actions.
• Professionals from all backgrounds use and recommend our tools. See our testimonials page here.
• And we believe in supporting coaches as they get started! Because we know how hard it is to get started coaching, many of our tools are available absolutely free!