Sometimes people sign up for their first session knowing that they want to grow in some capacity (personally or professionally) but are unsure about the coaching process.

What does a coaching session look like? What can I expect to do? Is there any prepwork? What does homework mean?

It can all seem a little daunting at first, but I want to walk you through a typical coaching session, so that you can feel more at ease.

The first thing to remember is that coaching is a collaborative process. That means that you and I work together to guide the discussion in a way that benefits you the most. Some of my clients prefer to use the 50 min time slot to talk things out. They work best in an environment where they talk about a problem they are having, and I help guide them toward progress by asking them questions and showing them tools that can help along the way. Other clients are more visual and hands on. They prefer to use our time together to create vision boards or do tangible exercises to help them gain some clarity. Group clients, such as families or coworkers may work on a project together while I guide them through the process. It’s all up to you and how you learn best–something we discuss in our free discovery session.

A Typical Session

Before your session with me, you will fill out a pre-session worksheet to help guide our time together more effectively. It might be more general in nature–asking how your week was, areas where you might feel stuck, things you’ve tried and have worked (or not worked). It also might be a worksheet specifically targeted toward your goal. Either way, it helps you to pinpoint areas you want to make sure we cover in our session together.

When we meet, we will go over any homework (more on that in a minute), and we will talk a bit about any metrics you might have logged. For example, if one of your goals is to spend time meditating for at least 10 minutes each morning in order to calm your day, you would’ve been tracking those minutes each week via the client portal (Don’t worry–I have reminder emails set for that which make this process easy as cake).

Then we would move on to any insights you came up with in your pre-session worksheet. Maybe you found that you can’t meditate in the mornings because things are too crazy with getting the dogs fed, the kids off the school, and finding time to even shower! So we would go through your day and find a better time that might work for you. Or maybe we find a way to get the kids involved with their own meditation, if that would help. Or maybe 10 minutes is too long, so we cut back to 5 and try to work our way up. Or we find out that there are free meditation classes each week at the local community center, so we adjust your goal to incorporate one long weekday session rather than every day. We could even take 5 minutes to do a guided meditation right that second! The point is to set you up for success, and to be creative about how we achieve our goals.

Vision Boards

In our very first meeting together, we would’ve mapped out a vision board that served as a map, of sorts, toward your goal. Think of it like a candyland gameboard with smaller objectives along the path. So at every session, we go back to that vision board (plus you can see it on your client portal at anytime). We would look at where you are standing right now (just like your little gingerbread playing piece). And we would celebrate any obstacles you’ve overcome (that molasses swamp a few months ago) and note any obstacles that might be looming in the distance. We would make a plan for those bumpy moments, and break them down into digestible bites, so that you can surmount them much more easily, especially with me cheering in your corner!

Finally, we would come up with an action plan for our next session. We always want to have actionable items that you can complete before the next session so we can slowly move our way up that vision path! Plus, it feels really good to check things off of our list, doesn’t it? Those action items become our homework. Yes, you do have homework every session.

Homework is your chance to take what we learned in our session together and apply it to your daily life.

The point of coaching isn’t just talking the talk. It’s walking the walk–acting upon our ideas. And homework is how we make that happen. Every assignment is strategically picked with your unique needs in mind. The client portal makes it so easy for you to follow up on your homework. There are action items to check off and reminders to help you get there. And if you are ever stuck, I’m an email away!

Hopefully this helps you understand a bit about how a typical one-on-one coaching session might work. Group sessions are similar, but the assignments and discussions are more generalized toward the group needs, rather than unique to the individual. You can read more about group sessions on my Service Types section.