Powerful Coaching Exercises to Help You Help Others Change Their Lives for the Better

When it comes to how you serve your clients, there are two elements to consider. 

The first is a proven coaching program. This is the overarching framework to the transformation you help people achieve in your coaching business. A great coaching program helps you deliver consistent, reliable results and confidently set yourself apart as a standout coach.

The second is a diverse toolbox of coaching exercises for clients. These individual tools support your coaching process and help you support your clients better.

The more exercises you have in your coaching toolkit, the more you’ll be able to help them experience real transformation. They allow you to meet your clients where they are and help them move forward in creative ways.

In this post, you’ll learn about the different types of coaching exercises, with examples. PLUS, you can download a free PDF of 5 of our favorite life coaching exercises to use in your coaching practice!

5 Types of Coaching Exercises

1. Evaluation

Evaluation coaching exercises focus on the present and help clients identify what’s working and what isn’t. These coaching assessments help you and your client understand where they are now. They might help your clients understand how they identify with their current circumstances. Or, they might help your client have ah-ha moments about what’s actually true in their present circumstances.

2. Reflection

Reflection exercises* focus on the past. These coaching tools help your client assess the meaning they may have applied to past experiences. These exercises often reveal blocks and limiting beliefs. Reflection exercises are also a great way to find resource states clients can use to support new behaviors.

*These types of exercises often require that the coaching relationship has a certain level of rapport. Be aware of your client’s readiness to reflect on the past, and always be mindful of your scope of practice. Some issues are best referred to a mental health professional.

3. Goal-Setting

Goal setting exercises help your client identify the future they want to create. When you support your clients in imagining a future they’d love and setting goals accordingly, you can help them achieve results. These exercises also help create reference points for other decisions your clients will make along their journey.

4. Growth

Growth exercises help your clients expand their self-identity and integrate new learning and insights. These types of exercises challenge your clients to step outside of the status quo. Use these types of exercises to help your client move beyond their old paradigms and ways of thinking, being, and doing.

5. Practice

Practice exercises focus on application and habit-building. They empower your clients to apply, over time, the things they learn in the coaching experience. These exercises also support the development of empowering new habits and help your client achieve results that are lasting. As an added benefit, clients can often use these exercises on their own long after the coaching journey has ended!

Examples of the 5 Types of Coaching Exercises

1. Evaluation

One of the evaluation exercises we use at Brave Thinking Institute is Longing and Discontent.

We believe that feelings of longing and discontent in any area of life are actually signs that something greater is available. When clients identify their own longing and discontent, they quickly and easily set the stage for new goals.

How to: Invite your client to consider each of the four areas of their life. These are health and wellness, relationships, time and money freedom, and vocation. In one area at a time, ask your client to identify where they feel any sense of longing or discontent. Challenge them to be specific about what isn’t working, what they wish could be different or where they aren’t satisfied.

2. Reflection

A simple, but powerful reflection exercise you can use is Resource States.

Resource states are past reference points that act as evidence that a client can have the outcome he or she desires. They help clients generate feelings that can help them create more positive results.

How to: Identifying a current challenge or limiting belief. Then, ask your client to reflect on past experiences in which they did experience the outcome they wanted. Once they’ve identified a past event, ask them to imagine it as clearly as possible.

Next, encourage them to connect with the feelings of that memory. Use questions like, “How did you feel when you experienced that?” “What emotions did you have about that outcome?” or “Where do you feel those emotions in your body?”

Finally, help them create a plan to reconnect with those feelings whenever they find themselves facing the challenge at hand.

3. Goal-Setting

A foundational goal-setting exercise uses the simple question, “What would you love?”

How to: Invite your client to consider each of the four areas of their life. These are health and wellness, relationships, time and money freedom, and vocation. In one area at a time, ask your client to identify what they would love. The value in this question lies in imagining what they would most love to have, be, do, or create without limitation.

4. Growth

One of our most-used growth exercises at Brave Thinking Institute is to Access Your Future Self-Identity.

How to: As clients expand into new ways of doing things, they’ll naturally face new challenges, as well as old limits. This exercise can help them overcome challenges and limits in new ways and generate new results. To use this exercise, ask your client to imagine the future version of themselves. Specifically, the future version of themselves for whom everything worked out exactly as they would have loved.

Then, ask your clients to imagine that the future version of themselves is a resource they have access to. Use questions like, “What would that version of you do in the situation you’re facing right now?” or “What advice would that version of you give you right now?”

5. Practice

A practice exercise you can support your clients in using is to develop a gratitude practice.

How to: Invite your client to commit to an experiment of practicing gratitude. Suggest a practice that is short and attainable- I often recommend 30 seconds before getting out of bed in the morning. They can practice identifying things in their life that they are grateful for, or just generating gratitude for the new day.

Then, like in any experiment, have them record how this practice impacts their lived experience. This will give you additional information for your coaching sessions. It will also present an opportunity to shift the practice to something that works differently or better.

5 Life Coaching Exercises PDF

Want to use these powerful coaching exercises in your coaching practice?

Click here to download an exclusive Life Coaching Exercises PDF!

For additional tips, challenges, and insights, download and save and use the coaching exercises PDF! Use it  as a reference guide for your own rapid-result coaching sessions.