There are thousands of great coaching training exercises that work with clients, and every coach probably has that one great coaching training exercise that works best for them. But, there is one exercise you may want to add to your coaching repertoire.

One Great Coaching Training Exercise

Here it is – one great coaching training exercise. This is a great assessment tool and will help you determine who your client is, where they are, and what they need to do to work toward their goals.

The exercise is designed to determine the comfort level of your client. It begins with a few questions.

1. When is the last time you tried something new and different?
2. When was the last time you took a risk?
3. Do you dream of doing something different?

These questions are designed to be general and not specific. For example, the first question can refer to any aspect of the client’s life – personal, career, family, relationship. You can plot the answers along a comfort line – one end of the line could be stagnant, the middle could be comfortable, and the other end could be progressing. The ideal spot would be comfortable, as this person would be moving forward, looking for new opportunities and experiences, but comfortable with their position in life.

However, every client is different. Some may want to be comfortable, while others, usually younger adults, may desire to be in the progressing category. Once you have plotted their answers, this coaching training exercise continues by asking them the following questions:

1. Do you have a desire to try something different?
2. Do you enjoy taking risks?
3. Do you enjoy being different?

You can plot their answers on the same line and see how they two answer groups match up. This coaching training exercise depends on your interpretation and analysis of the way the answers are plotted on the line.

This exercise concludes by figuring out three actions the client can take to move toward their desirable end of the line. For example, one client may have answered the first grouping of questions with answers that are skewed toward the progressing end of the line, but the second group of answers are skewed more to the stagnant side of the line. This may mean that they want to find a comfort level; they have reached a place in life when they are comfortable, and want to take action to settle down. You and the client work together to formulate three actions they can take to reach this goal. Once the actions are created, you can work with the client on the best ways to implement these actions in their lives.

This great coaching training exercise can also be made visual with a few props. Using some type of partition, a big comfy chair ( which you probably have in your office), and a step ladder, you can set up this line in your office. The partition can be the stagnant end of the line, the step ladder can be the progressing end of the line, and the big comfy chair can be placed in the middle. Many exercises and activities can then be created to determine where your clients are, where they want to be, and how they can move to the desirable place along the line.

This great coaching training exercise works in many different segments of coaching and gives you a great assessment tool to use with your clients. Give it a try – it may become one of your favorites

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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