Questions to ask at the beginning of a coaching program:
- If you were to look back 3 years from now, and realize that it has been the best 3 years of your life… what has to have happened, for you to feel thrilled with your progress?
- What’s going to hold you back from creating that life?
- What would you like to accomplish that looks impossible but if it were achieved would change everything?
- What’s missing from your life and/or business? And how do you keep it out?
Talents & Skills
- What are 3 of your key strengths?
- What are the dark sides if these 3 key strengths? (e.g: for a hyper driven client, their dark side of this strength might be that they struggle to take some rest and time off)
- What is something you do, for which you get amazing compliments by people around you, but secretly, when you do this, you feel lazy?
- Which skill are you world-class at?
- Which skill would you love to learn/master?
Purpose
- What do you want?
- What is it that you really want that these things might give you?
- What activities do you love to do anytime, while forgetting about everything else?
- What do you love to do during your free time?
- What did you love doing when you were a kid?
- What did you want to become when you were a kid?
- What are your passions?
- Which causes are you willing to stand for/fight for?
- If you got 100M$ to invest in a cause that mattered the most to you, how would you invest it?
- What legacy do you want to leave?
Death
- If you were on your deathbed, what regrets would you have?
- What would you like people to remember about you once you pass away?
- If you knew you will die in a week, what would you do with your remaining time?
- If you knew you will die in three months, what would you do with your remaining time?
- If you knew you will die in three years, what would you do with your remaining time?
People
- Who are the 2-5 people who bring you the most joy/fulfilment/results in your life?
- Who is one person you would love to have strengthened your connection/relationship with?
- Who are the people who inspire you?
- What are the qualities that inspire you in them?
- Which community would you love to discover/join/belong to?
- Which community would you love to create?
- What can I do with the people I know to leverage my business?
- What does society need the most?
- What are the most important topics for you?
Planet
- If you could create this planet in the way you wanted, what would that look like?
- What footprint do you want to leave of your passage on this Earth?
- Which environmental problems would you love to have solved?
- When was the last time you spent in Nature?
- What would your ideal time in Nature look like?
- If you had more Nature in your life, what would that look like? How can you make that happen (one tiny step at a time) ?
- What would be 1 action you know would be good for the planet and you would like to do?
Prosperity
- How can you help your client’s clients right now?
- How can you monetize this?
- How much income/revenue would you like to create?
- How could you grow your business to $xK?
- How much money do you want to make?
Psyche
- What is weighing on your mind right now?
- What drains you of energy? What fills you of energy? (have them fill out the energy list)
- What would be a practice you could do that would bring you more peace of mind?
- What is one bad habit you have you wished you could change?
- What would be one thing you could do if you wanted to take better care of your health?
Unlocking Fear / Challenging your client
- So what?
- Who cares?
- What is holding you back?
- What is the best thing that can happen?
- What is the worse thing that could happen?
- What is the most likely thing that can happen?
- Is that true?
- What if the opposite of that story was true? What would that look like?
- What are you the most afraid of?
- Why?
- Why not?
- Why not you?
- Why not now?
- Who are you NOT to do this?
- What have you done for/about X ?
- What are you not hearing right now?
- What are you not seeing right now?
Other Questions
- How can I help/serve you in this moment?
- What would it look like if you made [their 3-year goal] happen in 6 months?
- How can you measure it?
- What do you do that is better than anybody else?
- If you didn’t have to worry about money for the rest of your life, what would you do with your time?
- What would it be like if you were fully alive?
- What does your head say?
- What does your heart say?
- What does your gut say?
- What are the most important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on one of them?
- If you could take a year off to work on something that probably wouldn’t be important – but would be really interesting – what would it be?
- What’s the question you’d love an answer to?
- What is one question, that if answered, would change everything for you?
- If you could only subtract to solve problems, what would you subtract?
- (create a not-do do list)
- What could you put in place to go off the grid for 4-8 weeks?
- What if everything was OK just as it is?
- What would this look like if this were easy?
- How could you use money on a problem/to improve quality of life?
- If you had a gun to your head, and only had 20 seconds to make that decision, what would you do?
- What is the question that you wished I asked you?
- What is the question you wished I didn’t ask you?
- What is something you want me to know about you?
- What is something you don’t want me to know about you?
- If you had 0$, how would you solve that problem?
- What does your ideal client/partner/lover look like? (be specific)
- What was the most challenging situation you faced in your life?
- How did you overcome it?
- What did you learn from it?
- What would make this an extraordinary conversation?
- What will you do to make this happen?
- How are you the most likely to hold yourself back and not get the full value of this experience?
- What would you have to do or how would you have to show up to get everything you want (and more) from this Intensive?
- Who do you admire the most?
- What are the specific traits you admire the most about them?
- What is a goal you have right now, that seems impossible, but if achieved would change everything for you?
- Who would you have to be to make that happen?
- What price are you willing to pay to make that happen?
- What can you take off your plate?
- If there was only one goal you could accomplish this year, what would that be?
- If there was only one goal you could accomplish in your lifetime, what would that be?
- What are you seeing right now that your clients/other people are missing?
- How do you feel in this moment?
- What would you love to create?
- What would that look like if it was a 10/10? What if it was an 11?
- What if you could 10x your impact, what would that look like?
- What if you slowed down, what would that look like?
- What is your biggest insight in our conversation so far?
- What is missing in your life?
- What would Jesus do in that situation? [Replace Jesus with a person they admire]
- How are you keeping it out of your life/business?
- So what is this really about?
- What needs to shift in you to make this happen?
- How important is it for you to…?
- What are you avoiding?
- How would you like to wrap up our time together?
- What would make that better?
- What’s the discomfort that lives in the comfort you chose for yourself?
Questions to ask for a testimonial:
- What was going on in your life before working with me?
- What are the three best decisions you made thanks to our coaching program?
- What was the most difficult decision you had to make?
- What was the most powerful thing you got from coaching together?
- How have you been transformed in the work together?
- To whom would you recommend working with me?
Identifiable Sources:
I created quite a few of these questions especially for Conscious Business, and I am deeply grateful to Rich Litvin, Steve Hardison, Jim Rohn, Tim Ferriss, Hayden Lee, and others for their powerful questions I added in this list.
Jean-Sébastien Simon - Conscious Business Coach 