Last updated on July 16, 2024
Passion, motivation, authenticity, confidence, empathy—all of these are qualities of a great life coach. But coaching isn’t just about possessing good traits; it’s about applying a diversified set of resources that help clients make a positive change in their lives.
The impact of your coaching largely depends on your toolkit. A strategic use of different life coaching tools, exercises, and techniques ensures that you can reach different individuals, identify their roadblocks, and inspire them to take action. That’s why we’ll be sharing the best coaching tools, forms, exercises, worksheets, and more that have a track record of delivering tangible results.
- Goal-setting Worksheet
- The Wheel of Life
- The Three Good Things Gratitude Exercise
- The Energy Zappers Exercise
- The Life Map Tool
- Doors Closed Doors Open
- Stress Inventory Assessment
- Get Perspective Vision Worksheet
- What Makes My Heart Sing?
- Reflective Journaling
- Average Perfect Day Exercise
- Big Rocks and Little Rocks Exercise
- Tolerations (Clear Your Mind) Exercise
- The GROW Model
- The Coaching Tools & Exercises Megapack
Table of Contents
1. Goal-Setting Worksheet
Here’s one of the fundamental life coaching worksheets that can give you and your clients clarity on what they need and expect. The goal-setting worksheet helps clients outline their aspirations, break them into actionable steps, and set realistic timelines. It’s best to use this tool in the first session to pinpoint what clients want and create a structured approach to achieving their desired outcomes.
2. The Wheel of Life
The Wheel of Life is a super popular visual tool that assesses various aspects of a client’s life, such as career, relationships, and health. It is the perfect tool for introductory sessions to learn more about clients’ satisfaction with their lives, but it can also be helpful for tracking progress.
Clients use the tool to rate their satisfaction in each area, creating a representation of their life balance. It’s a versatile tool for coaches to initiate discussions and identify priorities. We’ve explained this tool in detail in this overview if you’d like to know more.
3. The Three Good Things Gratitude Exercise
This simple exercise inspires reflection on three positive experiences each day. Clients just need to write down three good things that happened that day, ideally before going to sleep. It is the perfect exercise for promoting a positive mindset and gratitude. If they practice it regularly, clients can shift their focus towards the positive aspects of life.
4. Energy Zappers Coaching Exercise
The Energy Zappers exercise encourages clients to identify and evaluate activities that drain their energy. If your clients are experiencing burnout or a lack of energy, or if you simply want to help them design an ideal self-care routine, this exercise will help you with that. The task is to write down situations that drain clients’ energy. Based on their input, you can help them redirect their focus toward activities that minimize those energy-draining elements.
5. Life Map Coaching Tool
The Life Map tool provides a visual representation of a person’s life, including significant milestones, challenges they’ve faced, and future aspirations. Clients are asked to write down their highs and lows up to this point in life. This tool supports self-reflection and goal-setting while helping you get to know the client better. Coaches use this tool to help clients gain clarity on their life’s trajectory and help them define their future goals.
6. Doors Closed Doors Open Exercise
Doors Closed Doors Open or One Door Closes is such an inspiring exercise that guides clients through reframing setbacks as opportunities for growth. The clients need to write down a challenging experience and reflect on new opportunities that have arisen due to that setback. We love this exercise because it encourages a positive outlook when faced with adversity.
7. The Stress Inventory Assessment
This assessment tool can help clients identify sources of stress in different life domains. Why is this important? By pinpointing stressors, you can work with your clients to develop tailored coping strategies and action plans to eliminate or minimize the causes. In the Stress Inventory assessment, clients mark down the stressful events they’ve experienced in the last year, assigning each event a number of points. Based on total points, you can get a better understanding of the amount of stress your clients have endured.
8. Get Perspective Vision Worksheet
When it comes to goal planning, the Get Perspective Vision Worksheet is a much-favored tool for coaches. It encourages clients to envision their ideal future by detailing specific goals, values, and desired outcomes. The exercise is very practical since it helps clients prioritize what they should start doing in the next 3 months to achieve their 10-year goals.
9. What Makes My Heart Sing? Tool
Do you want to prompt clients to explore their passions and values? Here’s a tool for that. In the What Makes My Heart Sing? exercise, clients need to identify activities that bring joy and fulfillment.
You can use this to shift clients’ focus to things that make them happy or to show them that life is filled with joyful activities and situations. This is also a wonderful exercise to inspire self-connection and self-love.
10. Reflective Journaling
Journaling as a practice has exploded in popularity in recent years after its numerous benefits have come to light. Now, we’ll put reflective journaling in the spotlight since it’s a great tool for gaining introspection and clarity. Reflective journaling refers to writing down thoughts, emotions, and situations that you’ve experienced and that you can learn from. Its power lies in promoting self-awareness and giving clients an outlet for free expression.
11. Average Perfect Day Exercise
If you want to learn more about client’s aspirations and what they need to live a fulfilling life, use the Average Perfect Day Exercise. It’s super simple. Just ask your clients to imagine their perfect day and describe it. They should be very detailed and descriptive, including the emotions they feel, the activities they engage in, the environment they’re in, and so on. You can leverage this exercise to discover clients’ preferences and define actionable steps they need to take to get closer to that “perfect” day.
12. Big Rocks and Little Rocks Exercise
The Big Rocks and Little Rocks exercise is a time-management tool that helps clients focus on key priorities to boost their productivity and improve their results. This tool can be especially useful in niches such as time-management coaching, career coaching, or business coaching. It is inspired by a metaphorical story. You’ll ask clients to identify and label their most significant priorities (big rocks), less important tasks (pebbles), and least important activities (sand). Based on their answers, you can help them define their priorities, determine which tasks take up most of their time, which activities need less attention, and the goals they need to focus on.
13. Tolerations (Clear Your Mind) Coaching Exercise
The Tolerations (Clear Your Mind) coaching exercise is all about discovering the mind-consuming clutter so clients can free up their mental and emotional resources for more meaningful thoughts and activities. Tolerations represent those energy-draining situations or unresolved issues that clients are tolerating. Clients should identify and write down their tolerations, and you can guide them toward a clearer and more focused mindset.
14. The GROW Model
The GROW Model (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) is a structured coaching framework that has been globally recognized for its effectiveness and simplicity. It guides clients through goal clarification, realistic assessment of the current situation, exploration of potential solutions, and commitment to action. This 4-step model provides you with a systematic approach to helping clients achieve their goals.
15. Coaching Tools Megapack
For an all-in-one solution, we recommend this comprehensive megapack with numerous tools for life coaching, forms, and life coaching exercises in PDF. The Coaching Tools & Exercises Megapack contains 17 different toolkits for life and career coaching. All of the materials are editable, so you can align them with your coaching brand. Some of the included tools and exercises are the Love Your Weaknesses exercise, Build a Bridge Coaching exercise, Spring Clean Your Life toolkit, Self-Discovery toolkit, Productivity & Time Management toolkit, and many more.
Conclusion
These tried-and-true tools for coaches combined with your coaching skills and traits can be the perfect combination for unlocking clients’ potential and taking the right steps toward real change. With the help of a diversified arsenal of tools, you can adapt to various coaching scenarios and ensure that you identify the best ways of assisting clients in reaching their goals. And, if you want to ensure that you are fully equipped for any situation, you can opt for the one-stop-shop Coaching Tools & Exercises Megapack.
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