A First Coaching Session Structure You Can Rely On

The first session has one job that most structures forget: to make the second session obviously worth coming back for. Not to solve anything. Not to walk through the contract line by line. To leave the client clear about what you are working on together, how you will work on it, and that you are on their side.

That last sentence is the working alliance in plain words, and it is not a soft extra. In de Haan and colleagues' research on executive coaching outcomes, clients' ratings of the working relationship were significantly related to how much they felt the coaching had helped. Session one is where that relationship is first built, or first strained.

Before the session

Send two things a few days ahead. A short intake form with the practical questions: role, what prompted them to book, anything they want you to know before you meet. And one structured piece of pre-work. One, not three. The Self-Discovery Coaching Worksheet works well here because it starts with values, beliefs and strengths and leaves goals until the end. Ask the client to leave that part for the session.

If the client was sent rather than came, because a manager or sponsor is paying, add the Coachability Worksheet Set. How someone relates to feedback is the topic that otherwise turns up unannounced around session three, usually as a cancelled appointment.

The structure, with timings

This is for a ninety minute first session. For sixty minutes, shrink each stage in proportion and protect the last one.

1. Contracting, ten minutes. What coaching is and is not, confidentiality and its limits, how sessions run, what happens between them. Close it with one question: how will we both know this is working?
2. Why now, twenty-five minutes. The most useful question in a first session is not what they want. It is why now. Something changed that made them book this month rather than last year, and the answer usually tells you more than the presenting goal does.
3. The wider picture, twenty minutes. Use a structured tool to look past the presenting issue. The wheel of life, debriefed properly, is the obvious choice. The pre-work does the same job if it came back complete.
4. A first-draft goal, twenty minutes. Write it down and call it a draft out loud. Ask what would be different in three months that they would notice on an ordinary Tuesday. Goals agreed in session one tend to be the presenting problem in a better outfit, so expect to rewrite this one.
5. One experiment and the close, fifteen minutes. Agree one small thing to try before you next meet. Then ask for feedback on the session itself: what was most useful today, and what should I do differently next time? Clients are rarely asked. It is the cheapest alliance-building move you have.

Four mistakes that cost the second session

• Solving the presenting problem before you understand it. It feels generous, and it teaches the client that you are the one with the answers.
• Reading the terms and conditions aloud. Contracting is a conversation about how you will work together, not a recital. Send the paperwork beforehand.
• Accepting the first goal as final. The first goal is the one the client could say to a stranger.
• Running out of time for the close. The last fifteen minutes are where the client decides whether to come back. Guard them.

Where structure gets in the way

A structure is there to steady you, not to run the client. Some first sessions refuse it: the client arrives mid-crisis, or tells you something five minutes in that changes everything. Drop the plan when that happens. The timings above are a default for an ordinary first session, and the ordinary first session is the one you can prepare for.

Know your scope while you do. If what you are hearing sounds clinical rather than developmental, say so, kindly and early, and point the client towards their GP or a therapist. Naming that line in session one is not a failure of the coaching. It is part of doing the job properly.

What to have ready

A first session needs very little kit: an intake form, one pre-work tool, one structured tool for the wider picture, and a page for the draft goal. The Coaches Starter Library includes the Self-Discovery Coaching Worksheet, the Coachability Worksheet Set and the Wheel of Life Worksheet alongside twenty-seven other assets, all licensed for use with as many clients as you see.

Frequently asked questions

Session two is won or lost in the last fifteen minutes of session one.