If you want to be the best coach, you must have a plan. One that’s concrete and tangible. Using coaching templates when working with clients is an excellent tool in your arsenal as they help you guide and lead your clients through a transformative experience.
Using coaching templates is super helpful to
- Visualize your client’s goals and record them in ink so that you don’t stray
- Prepare therapeutic contracts to get you and your client to agree on certain things
- Individualize standard coaching frameworks to suit your client’s unique needs
- Track your session progress and make changes as and when necessary
- Add structure to your coaching so that you do not lose focus or digress from your clients’ core pain points
To help you get there, we’ve compiled the ultimate list of coaching templates for coaches like you. We’ll first start with what makes an excellent coaching template and then dive into free coaching templates across five core categories that you can use.
Skip ahead:
- What are the features of the best coaching templates?
- Here are the best coaching templates
- Here are the best intake coaching templates to use
- Here are the best coaching template examples for a general audience
- Here are the best coaching handouts for niche groups
- Check out these miscellaneous templates too
What are the features of the best coaching templates?
Underline your coaching style
A coaching template is a go-to guide to follow on how you will work with your client. Therefore, a good one is designed to remind you of your authentic style. We all know how easy it is to get distracted by the multiple coaching styles in vogue today!
Describe your framework in detail
A good coaching template allows you to describe what you will do with each of your clients in detail. It includes blanks to outline your coaching framework, which can act as the skeleton of each session you plan.
Outline your coaching process.
We all know that coaching is rarely (almost never!) a one-time consultation. After all, it is a process to transform individuals to their true potential, which can’t possibly occur in a day. Therefore, a coaching template should be flexible to incorporate your process and plan to achieve goals.
Estimate the time frame or the number of coaching sessions
Even though coaching is recurring, it cannot continue endlessly. You have to restrict it to a particular duration. For that, you need to start with a primary number of sessions, which may be reduced or increased as per changing needs. A good template takes care of that.
Support with managing your coaching business
Finally, you also need help managing your coaching business. This includes aspects around the different payment options, signup process, or offering bonuses in terms of discounts. You’ll also need to manage handouts and intake forms that help your clients sign up. Good coaching templates have provisions for managing these aspects too.
With that, let’s look at 25 coaching templates that can help you improve results for your coaching profession.
Here are the best coaching templates to use
Whether coaching is your active or passive income stream, you need to treat your coaching business like any other business to ensure it grows scalably. After all, there are bills to pay and invoices to be processed. Consequently, as a coach, you should ideally use templates to simplify accounting, marketing, client management, and other business processes.
Here are some essential ones that can help you smoothly run your show:
Whenever you collect a coaching fee, it’s good to hand out a payment receipt. This receipt template is a great one that can help you create a good professional impression. Keeping the core elements the same, you can always customize them as per your preferences.
Once successful, you will need to start sending out automated invoices at scale to streamline your payment collection. This invoice template is specifically designed for life coaches and looks very professional. You can always modify its specifics as per your setup.
For coaches, social proof is one of the most potent areas to generate new business opportunities. If you want to leverage your existing client base to generate an inflow of hot leads, you can use this template.
Complimentary sessions are a great way to engage your existing coaching clients and drive loyalty. They always work because they are free! So we’d say save this template and use it whenever you plan to offer complimentary session vouchers. This stylish template can also be convenient when conducting workshops or conferences.
If you’re planning to build an email list to earn followers using lead magnets and send out newsletters to warm up potential clients into paying customers, you have homework to do. Besides planning content strategy and implementation, you’ll need to ensure you’re GDPR compliant to avoid violating any regulation. Important Fact: This regulation is compulsory in several locations, and if you’d like to use a template to ensure GDPR compliance in your email marketing, you can save this!
Once you acquire clients, the next step is proper onboarding and leading them effectively along the way. Let’s look at templates that can help then.
Here are the best intake coaching templates to use
Intake templates are super helpful for taking on new clients and ensuring that you have their consent forms neatly collected. This is a regulation in most countries, and you may also be required to collect certain identification information in some jurisdictions. The following intake templates below can be modified and adjusted according to your geographical location.
As coaches, the first session is always quite crucial as it’s the chance to take a lot of your clients’ details into account. The best way to collect and use that information is to leverage an intake session checklist template which gathers wide information about your client. We’d suggest closely following this free template to ensure you don’t miss out on any essential details.
In some jurisdictions, you may be required to store all client information offline. However, there may be other situations where you could meet your client face-to-face. In times like these, this client info sheet template can be handy. It’ll help you be prepared and easily record your clients’ critical information, such as contact details, problem areas, etc., for looking up in the future.
If you have already contacted the client and they are ready to enroll in your coaching program, you should ideally also welcome them on board with a friendly letter. This template is perfect for that warm-up and to ensure that they kickstart their transformative journey on a positive note.
An essential part of coaching is to guide your clients to identify their core problem areas beforehand. The Wheel of Life coaching template is an excellent tool for this purpose. It covers a range of life issues such as money, relationships, health, etc. It was discovered by Paul J. Meyer and can be printed in a pie chart pattern. We’d say save this coaching template for sharing with your clients in the early stages.
An emotion thermometer is another handy template to use with clients you’ve onboarded. You can use it to help them quantify their feelings concerning different emotions. If they feel furious, they mark a higher number, and so on. You can also customize the emotion thermometer to suit your coaching needs if you’re looking to tackle any different feelings and emotions.
While the above coaching template examples are for run-of-the-mill use, now let’s look at free coaching template examples for different audience types.
Here are the best coaching template examples for a general audience
If you are going to offer coaching services to a general audience, it makes sense to give them handouts explaining what a coaching session is and how it is different from therapy and other regulated services. This is important to set the right expectations at the onset so clients understand exactly what their role should be like.
The Life Story Worksheet is a handy generic coaching template to get your clients to describe their life story in the past, how they see it in the present, and how they would like it to be in the future. This helps you not only guide them but also presents an opportunity to introspect and discover true insight about their own lives. It’s a great starting point for a transformative journey.
Most people do not understand the difference between thoughts and emotions. Even when they do, they do not understand different emotions and their nuances. For example, most people think in terms of basic emotions such as “hate” or “love”. They often say they “hate something” when they, in fact, mean to say, they dislike or simply want to avoid something.
It is important for you as a coach to teach your clients the differences in the wide range of emotions. The emotion Faces coaching template is a great handout you can give your clients so they can correctly associate faces with different emotions. Trust us, this will also help you build rapport with your clients.
If your clients find it difficult to develop healthy new habits, you need to be there for them as their coach. Just give them this handy habit-building tip sheet with different tips to help them assess their lifestyle. With this as a starting point, they’ll be better equipped to replace them with healthy habits. You can always modify its specifics per your coaching need as well.
Whether you are planning to guide them in their business, career, or life in general, most of your clients will often need help to explore their own goals. This coach template is perfect for clients who find it challenging to identify and explore their goals.
A Mandala is a Buddhist-inspired pattern of drawing. It has traditionally been used in eastern traditions as a form of meditation. Modern-day coaches often use mandalas to encourage coloring with the benefit of reducing stress and focusing. You can always hand these to your clients to help them reduce their stress levels and improve focus.
If you need to work towards building rapport with a difficult client, asking them to color a mandala drawing can be a great ice-breaker. For others, you can simply print this out and ask them to color it regularly whenever they’re stressed.
Now, let’s move over to some specific categories.
Here are the best coaching handouts for niche groups
We’ll all agree that all coaching clients are not the same. They’re unique beings, after all, with specific requirements. The handouts we’ve listed below can be super helpful when managing them. They may help you feel inspired to create your own too. So here they are:
If your coaching clients are looking for business advice, this template can be a valuable tool in your coaching process. Doing successful business requires skills and techniques that clients need to develop. This template can help you to identify your client’s business weak points and help them to improve.
If you are looking for a coaching template example that helps guide your client in choosing the right career, this free template is a great pick. It includes a step-by-step user guide that describes how to improve one’s career.
Many small business owners often suffer from low self-esteem and require a different approach. This makes small business coaching different from regular business coaching. If that’s what you’re addressing with your coaching services, this free coaching template is excellent as it is bundled with tons of valuable tips.
Sometimes, clients do not know what they want. They seek coaching services to discover themselves and transform their lives. In such cases, you can use this self-discovery coaching toolkit, which clearly describes how to change people’s lives and lay out a robust program outline.
Some clients approach coaches to help set goals and improve how they view their lives. This coaching template makes a great pick in situations that warrant a framework for helping clients set their goals and visualize their future better.
Check out these miscellaneous templates too
The coaching business is a diverse industry; most coaches have very different needs. So, we’ve also compiled some additional miscellaneous templates to help you improve your business style and offer better services to your clients.
Ultimately, every coach helps clients build self-esteem and harbor positive thoughts. Giving a handout that coaching participants to record all the positive experiences in their lives helps deepen their self-esteem. Use this template to help your client remember all the good things that have happened in their lives.
Most people seeking coaching feel a need to improve in some area. As a coach, it’s your job to help them recognize their strengths and build self-esteem. Doing so also enhances their assertiveness. Use this template as a client handout for the best results on that front.
Most people who’re unhappy have one thing in common. They are not grateful for the things that they have. If you can help your clients understand this and urge them to be more thankful for all the blessings, they will lead happier lives. These gratitude exercises are great if you have clients who have many disappointments and resentments.
As a coach, your role is to guide people to look at their futures with optimism and decide what they will do to improve their lives. If you encounter a situation where your client is feeling low, you can guide them to look back and remember all the good things that have taken place in their lives. However, it is also vital to remind them that certain bad things happen to everybody, and it is best to reassess them positively. This coaching template will help you during those situations.
This is the best coaching template for that situation. Deep breathing scientifically helps a person relax and allows them to reduce their anxiety and stress levels. You can use this handout to help your client to learn how to breathe deeply without injuring themselves. We’d say give to them once you build rapport and help them relax both during the session and when they return.
Coaching templates are great. But sometimes you need a little extra something.
There are several templates to support you at every stage as a coach. Free coaching templates can make your job easy to streamline and deliver an excellent experience to your clients.
What if you want to scale your coaching business?
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