54+ Wheel of Life Coaching Questions to Rock Your Coaching Sessions!

Smiling Coach sitting at desk for Wheel of Life Coaching Questions with Tool

In this article are over 54 Wheel of Life Coaching Questions—that you can use with your clients when using the Wheel of Life Exercise! Because as you may already know, here at The Coaching Tools Company we love the Coaching Wheel. It's SUPER-flexible—and that makes it an extremely powerful exercise for our coaching toolbox.

These questions are in an order you might follow when using the wheel of life assessment in a coaching session. The questions are also grouped, starting with a review of the wheel scoring results, then choosing an area of the wheel to focus on, right through to brainstorming ideas, committing to an action plan and wrapping up the session.

If you need instructions for using the wheel of life exercise, you can find these on page two of our Free Wheel of life Template (as well as 12 basic wheel of life coaching questions). For everything else you might want or need to know about the wheel of life assessment, check out How to Use The Wheel of Life in Your Coaching Practice: A Complete Guide.

So, are you ready? Here are your Wheel of Life Coaching Questions for a brilliant coaching session with your clients.

Here are 54+ Coaching Questions for The Wheel of Life!

1) Coaching Questions to Review the Wheel of Life Results

Begin by taking a helicopter view of your client's wheel responses:

  1. If this was (literally) your wheel of life, would it be a bumpy ride?
  2. So, as you look at your completed wheel, how do you feel about your life?
  3. What surprises are there for you?
  4. What does not surprise you?
  5. Imagine for a moment that this is someone else's wheel of life. What do you notice? And what would you say to them?

2) Questions to Help your Client Choose a Life Area to Focus on

Let's figure out which segment of the wheel your client would like to zoom in on. This will most likely be an area with a low score—but not necessarily...

  1. Which of the wheel categories would you most like to improve?
  2. Which life area most needs your attention?
  3. And which segment would you be most excited to work on?
  4. Which life area should you be working on (but perhaps don't want to)?
  5. So, which life area will you work on first?

Once your client has chosen a wheel segment to explore more deeply, next coach them around that individual life area.

3) Coaching Questions to Explore and Go Deeper into individual Wheel Segments

Begin by explore your client's current 'reality' in this area. What's life like for them here?

  1. How do you currently spend time in this area?
  2. What is currently working for you in this life area? And what is not working?
  3. How would you like to spend time in this area?
  4. What might you be avoiding looking at here?
  5. What action have you taken to improve things in this area so far? And how effective was that?
  6. What's getting in the way of this area in your life being the way you'd like?
  7. What are the obstacles to making this area of your life more satisfying?
    • These can be big or small. Can you give me a list of 5-10 things?
    • Which are the obstacles with the biggest impact?
  8. Where are you getting in your own way when it comes to improving this area?

4) Coaching Questions to connect with their Vision for this area of their life

Before moving onto brainstorming ideas, help your client picture how they want this area of their life to be.

  1. What changes can you imagine happening in this area of your life? What can you envision?
  2. What would be your ideal—or dream—for this life area?
  3. Describe to me what a score of 10 would look like in this area.

5) Coaching Questions to Brainstorm Action Ideas

Now that your client understands what's working and what isn't (and what's getting in the way), it's time to brainstorm some action ideas.

  1. What ideas do you already have that would raise your score in this wheel of life area?
  2. What bothers you the most in this area of your life? And what could you do about that?
  3. What would definitely increase your score—even if it was really hard to do?
  4. What are the changes you need to make? What changes do you want to make?
  5. If you secretly knew what you needed to do, what would that be? (Remember you don't have to do it just because you speak it aloud, but by speaking it aloud, we courageously face the truth and can decide next steps!)
  6. What could you do Less of? More of?
  7. What would it take to make this area a score of 10/10?
  8. What would a best friend/expert in this area advise you to do?
  9. What if time money/time/energy were not an issue? What could you do?
  10. If there were simply no limits, worries or constraints, what would you do then?
  11. If there was one key action that could bring everything into more balance, what would it be?

6) Questions to Firm up Actions from the Wheel of Life Exercise

Now that you've brainstormed lots of possible actions with your client, it's time to firm up which actions they'll commit to.

  1. What is the obvious change to make first?
  2. What is the smallest step you could take to get started?
  3. Which action grabs or is calling to you?
  4. What's one change you would love to make?
  5. What action could you take that would make sense this week?
  6. What will you do today or in the next 24 hours?
  7. OK, so we have a plan! How do you feel about that?

7) Coaching Questions to Remove Obstacles to Change!

So, your client has an action plan. But all too often, life gets in the way. These wheel of life assessment questions deal with potential obstacles ahead of time!

  1. We're all so busy these days: How could you make space for these changes in your life?
  2. How might you get yourself off track? What could get in the way of you completing these actions?
  3. What other problems might there be? And what else? And what else?
  4. What ideas do you have to remove or minimise these obstacles?
  5. What changes do you need to make to your action plan?

8) Questions to Firm up Commitment

Now it's time to help your client to commit to their action plan.

  1. So let's review what you're going to do…
  2. How likely are you to complete this action plan out of 10? (where 1 is extremely unlikely and 10 is absolutely certain)
  3. How will you commit to this?
  4. What would make this more fun?
  5. How are you going to maintain momentum?
  6. How will you be able to prove/show you've completed your action?
  7. What help and support might you need to make these changes? And who from?
  8. How would you like to be held accountable?

9) Wheel of Life Coaching Session Wrap-up Questions

Finally, ask these powerful open-ended coaching questions to wrap-up your wheel of life coaching exercise:

  1. So, how was this session for you? What did you learn about yourself?
  2. What was your biggest win of this exercise?

Wheel of Life Coaching Questions Wrap-up

So this big list of coaching questions takes you through the process of using the Wheel of Life with a client—and hopefully give you lots of ideas for how to use the Wheel of Life effectively!

Depending on time and your client's interest levels, you may want to delve more deeply into more than one wheel segment. If so, simply go through the question cycle again!

As with all coaching sessions, there are endless directions you can take the Wheel of Life Exercise, so take guidance from your client and use your coaching skills and intuition to decide what to coach your client more deeply around.

Final Tip: It can also be helpful to use the GROW model when exploring your client's completed wheel. Ask your client for a G—Goal for the wheel segment/area or aspect of their life they want to improve. Then explore the R—Reality of that situation. Next brainstorm some O—Options and finally agree what the client W—Will Do. For more on this, check out our Guide to the GROW Model for Coaches (with PDF).

If you liked this article with Wheel of Life Coaching Questions, you may also like:

Have any great suggestions to add to these wheel of life assessment questions? We'd love to hear them—simply add a comment below!

Emma-Louise Elsey Headshot

Contributing Author:

Emma-Louise Elsey is passionate about kindness, coaching and personal development and has been coaching since 2003. She's the Founder and Former CEO of The Coaching Tools Company, and Founder of Fierce Kindness. Originally a project and relationship manager for Fortune 500 companies she loves to create coaching tools and exercises, including lots of free coaching tools for you here at The Coaching Tools Company. Through Fierce Kindness she helps people create a life they love, make a difference and learn to be kind to themselves.

She'd love you to sign-up for the Fierce Kindness Newsletter and grab a free How to Be Kind to Yourself Workbook. Or connect personally on Linkedin, Facebook or Instagram.

Learn more about Emma-Louise & see all their articles here >>

Image of Coach at desk with Wheel of Life Tool and Questions by PeopleImages.com Yuri+A via Shutterstock

4 Comments

    • Emma-Louise

      Hi Shahleeni, I'm so glad you enjoy the emails and resources! Thank-you for taking the time to comment! And I did have fun with this wheel of life coaching questions article 🙂
      Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply

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