Coaching Session Checklist
A free interactive, printable coaching session checklist for coaches and managers — preparation, contracting, exploration, intervention, close and follow-up.
Coaching Session Checklist
Tick as you go during or after a session, or print a blank copy to keep beside you. Nothing is saved or sent.
A practical structure for coaching conversations, written for coaches and managers who coach. Adapt it to your own approach.
What the coaching session checklist covers
This coaching session checklist gives coaches and managers twenty-one checks across six stages of a well-structured coaching conversation: preparation, opening and contracting, exploration, intervention, close and follow-up. You can tick items as you go, see your completion and print the list for a session.
The checks are deliberately behavioural. “Agreed today’s outcome in the client’s own words” is something you either did or did not do, which makes the list useful for reviewing a session as well as running one. It also makes it suitable for peer supervision: a colleague can observe and tick.
How to use it
Before the session, work through preparation. During it, keep the list nearby as a quiet prompt rather than a script. Afterwards, tick honestly and note the one or two checks you missed. Over several sessions, the misses form a pattern. Many coaches find they consistently skip the same step, often agreeing how both people will know the session was useful, or checking commitment on a 0–10 scale.
For managers, the contracting and close stages matter most. A coaching conversation without an agreed outcome tends to become advice-giving, and one without specific dated actions rarely changes anything.
Questions people ask
What should a coaching session include?
A useful coaching session includes preparation, a clear agreement on the outcome for today, open exploration before any suggestions, an intervention that fits the outcome, a close in which the client summarises and commits to dated actions, and follow-up notes. This checklist breaks those stages into twenty-one observable checks.
Can managers use this coaching checklist?
Yes. It works for manager-as-coach conversations as well as formal coaching. Managers often benefit most from the contracting and close stages, which turn a well-meant chat into an agreed outcome with specific actions and a follow-up date. The rest of the list still applies, scaled down to a shorter conversation.
Do I need to tick every item?
No. Some sessions rightly skip steps, for example a short check-in may not need a full intervention. The value is in noticing which items you miss repeatedly across sessions, because those usually reveal a habit worth changing in your own practice.