Coaching Session Prep Sheet

A mid-level manager in a high-volume environment shows up to sessions having thought about their situation in the car on the way over. The first 15 minutes of most sessions are orientation rather than work. They want coaching to help but don't experience it as requiring any preparation on their part.

Frame this as a session investment tool rather than homework. 'Five minutes before we meet changes what we can do in the time we have. This sheet focuses that five minutes.' The resistance to watch for is the client who says they prefer to come in 'fresh' — this often means they prefer to arrive without having confronted the discomfort the session might surface. Name the trade-off directly: 'Coming in fresh usually means we spend the first part of the session getting to the thing, rather than working on it.'

If the client fills in 'Topic/Concern' with something generic ('work stress') and leaves the intention field blank, they are not using this as a focusing tool — they're performing compliance. The useful entries are specific: a named person, a named decision, a named pattern. Ask what specifically is on their mind about that topic before treating the prep as complete.

Start by reading their stated intention aloud and asking whether the session delivered on it. If not, explore what got in the way of addressing what they came in to address. Then move to what 'feels good' and 'feels uncomfortable' — these two fields together often reveal the real presenting tension the client is managing.

A senior individual contributor tends to arrive at each coaching session having identified three new concerns since the last meeting. They cycle between topics, each one feeling urgent. Progress on any single area is slow because the focus keeps shifting, which the client experiences as their situation being genuinely complex rather than their attention being undirected.

Introduce as a constraint mechanism, not a planning tool. 'Before each session, you choose one thing. Just one. Everything else waits.' The client will likely push back that their situation requires addressing multiple things. Acknowledge that, and hold the constraint anyway: 'We can revisit whether one is the right number after you've tried it. The question is whether scattered attention has been working.'

Clients who use the 'Anything else on your mind' field to re-introduce the three topics they were asked to set aside are using the sheet to subvert the focus constraint rather than to hold it. If the 'Anything else' section is longer than the main topic section, the tool isn't functioning as intended.

After the session, ask whether staying with one topic changed the quality of the work compared to their usual sessions. The client who has been cycling often notices — for the first time — that sustained focus on one thing produces more movement than distributed attention across several. That observation is more useful than you pointing it out.

A director is about to have a performance conversation with a direct report they've been avoiding for several weeks. They know the conversation is necessary, have a session scheduled, and want to use coaching to prepare rather than just process afterward. The sheet's four-field structure maps cleanly onto this kind of preparation.

Frame this explicitly as a pre-conversation planning tool for this session. 'Instead of thinking about this in general, let's structure your prep. The four questions on this sheet cover exactly what you need to walk in clear.' Some clients resist writing things down for sensitive situations — name that this stays between you: 'This doesn't go anywhere. Writing it gives you a version to test against what you actually say when you're in the room.'

Watch for what the client puts in the 'intention' field versus the 'topic/concern' field. If both fields describe the problem rather than the outcome they want, the client is still in problem-orientation rather than outcome-orientation. The intention field should capture what they want to have achieved by the end of the session — and ultimately, by the end of the difficult conversation.

After preparation, return to the 'what feels uncomfortable' field. The discomfort named there is usually the emotional risk the client is managing — fear of the other person's reaction, fear of conflict, fear of being wrong. That named fear is what coaching can address directly before the client walks into the room.