The 6-Question Coaching Tool That Will Improve Your Coaching Outcomes 

Coaching intent form. Progress reports. Feedback forms. Coaching tools are an important part of every coach’s arsenal from before an engagement begins to after its completion. 

Whether you should use coaching tools is not the question to be asked; what’s up for debate is which coaching tools and when are they to be administered? Who’s accountable for implementing them (right from creation to gathering responses and creating reports)? How does one standardize their use in a multi-coach coaching business? 

When the answers to those questions are clear, coaching tools can vastly improve your coaching outcomes and your coaching experience. 

In this blog post, let’s talk about that one coaching tool that will turn your coaching outcomes around: the Self-Reflection Tool. 

What is the self-reflection coaching tool? 

Let’s talk about self-reflection on a broad level. Self-reflection is a powerful technique used in coaching to help clients gain deeper insights into themselves, their actions, thoughts, and emotions. It involves encouraging clients to engage in introspection and examine their experiences, beliefs, and behaviors critically. By promoting self-reflection, coaches aim to help clients make more conscious decisions, understand their motivations, and identify areas for personal growth and development. 

With the self-reflection coaching tool we’re sharing here (a Simply.Coach favourite!), you can create a standardized approach to have clients reflect on the past week, their progress towards goals, barriers to success, and an action plan for the next week. It keeps clients accountable, motivated, constantly tuned-in to their progress. 

The 6-question self-reflection coaching tool that will improve your outcomes 

Within Simply.Coach, digital coaching tools can be easily created from scratch or from a template. One of the most-loved templates is the Self-Reflections Tool, a 6-question long form that helps clients stay in touch with their progress journey. 

The self-reflection digital coaching tool comes built in with simple reflective prompts that work for every coaching niche and methodology. 

In addition to helping clients develop a reflecting habit, self-reflections, over the course of a few months of the engagement, help demonstrate clear shifts – and improvements – in your client’s life, in their own words! And with good reason: helping clients reflect regularly makes them more conscious of their objectives and progress, leading to greater application and outcomes. 

Let’s look at the 6 questions that make up Simply.Coach’s recommended self-reflections coaching tool: 

1. Objective: What did I set out to do? 
   What were the action items for the week? 

2. Good: 
   • What went well? 
     What action items were completed, or what positive progress was achieved? 
   • Why? What supported you? 
     Any people/actions/circumstances that helped? This will help replicate them. 

3. Difficult: 
   • What did not go well? 
     What action items were not completed, or which items were difficult to execute? 
   • Why? What held you back? 
     What were the barriers observed? This will help track and address & eliminate them. 

4. Different:
   • What will you do differently next time? Which processes or bottlenecks will you fix? 
     The answer to this prompts the user to work on their problem-solving skills, move forward, and self-motivate towards achieving their goals. 

Why the self-reflection digital coaching tool works 

The tool has been tried and tested on the regular by our founders in their coaching sessions, and they confirm that, when applied regularly and properly, it significantly improves client outcomes because it improves: 

1. Accountability 

It can be difficult to keep clients accountable all the way through the coaching journey. The desire to make a behavioral change is high at the start of a coaching engagement and towards the end, but the middle part is where you need tools to keep accountability up. Having to fill this form on a weekly basis keeps the effort they have to make top of mind. 

2. Transparency 

Is work really done towards achieving the goal? Are action points being acted upon? The self-reflection tool creates a visible journey of effort towards achieving goals. The reports from the tool, applied weekly, create a neat graph of the client’s progress. 

3. Motivation 

It’s difficult for clients to keep motivation up between sessions. This tool acts as a stand-in for you “checking-in” with the client, and helps them keep working on their action items and make progress on their goals, over the long term. 

4. Course correction 

Besides helping clients make continual progress, the tool also helps them – and you – map what’s working and what isn’t. It is a great way for you to begin the session, by discussing what worked and what didn’t, and work on eliminating any roadblocks that may be repeatedly getting in the way of progress.  

Now, while this form is ideal as a tool used for self-reflection and self-direction with the above questions on a weekly basis, self-reflection as a concept can be adapted in many ways for various objectives.   

Other ways to use self-reflection as a tool 

The self-reflection coaching tool can take various forms, depending on your coaching approach and the client’s needs. Here are some common elements and techniques used in self-reflection that make for great self-reflection tools for application in-session and beyond: 

• Journaling: Coaches recommend journaling to clients all the time, but getting clients to journal regularly can be an uphill task. Instead, you can create a tool which has 2-3 journaling prompts, prompting them to maintain a journal to record their thoughts, feelings, and experiences regularly. 

• Open-ended questions: Create a tool where you use open-ended questions to encourage clients to explore their feelings and thoughts more deeply, on a weekly or fortnightly basis. These questions prompt clients to reflect on their behaviors, choices, and beliefs. 

• Feedback analysis: You can send out feedback forms on a regular basis, and create a tool that asks prompting questions for clients to reflect on the feedback received. This analysis helps clients identify areas where they can improve and grow. 

• Identifying limiting beliefs: With open-ended questions, clients are guided to recognize and challenge limiting beliefs that may be hindering their progress. By reframing these beliefs, clients can create a more empowering mindset. This is a one-time tool that can be applied in-session, at the start of the engagement. 

• Visualization: Visualization questions help clients imagine their desired outcomes and the steps needed to achieve them. This process encourages self-reflection on what they truly want and the paths to get there. 

• SWOT Analysis: Using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, clients can evaluate their personal strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities for growth and development. 

The self-reflection coaching tool works because it not only helps cultivate a motivated, forward-thinking mindset, but it uses practicality to carve a productive way forward. With Simply.Coach’s Digital Tools feature, all you have to do is pick up the self-reflections tool template and apply it for your clients. You can also build on it and customize it, say with your brand colours and logo, if you’d like! Send it out, collect responses, have those responses turned into reports that you can view retrospectively for some perspective on progress. The system will do it all for you. 

Here’s where you can sign up for a free trial if you’d like to see how the tool works!  

FAQs

1. What are coaching tools? 

Coaching tools are essential forms and exercises that coaches use to enhance their coaching practice and help clients achieve their goals effectively. These tools play a crucial role in the coaching process and offer various benefits, both for the coach and the clients. 

2. Which coaching tools should a coach use? 

There are a host of coaching tools that a coach uses through an engagement, depending on the coaching niche. The coaching intent tool, 360º feedback coaching tool, feedforward tool, reflective goal setting tool, impact assessment tool, are a few commonly-used digital coaching tools. 

About the author

Vaidehi Mirashi

Content Marketing Consultant @ Simply.coach

Vaidehi is a content marketing consultant with a decade’s experience handling over 80 brands and multiple award-winning campaigns under her belt. When not working, you’ll find Vaidehi spending time with family, binge watching Netflix shows, and baking.