10 Tips to Close a Coaching Session
Many coaches find it challenging to wrap up a coaching session with impact and on time. An effective closing sequence should allow the coachee space to reflect on their session's insights and an opportunity to create commitments and momentum to move forward. Here are 10 of our favourite tips for closing a coaching conversation.
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Clearly Define the Way Forward (GROW Model)
Developed by Sir John Whitmore, the GROW Coaching Model is a simple and powerful coaching framework that provides a format for goal setting (G), reflection on reality (R), exploration of options available (O) and a focus on action to define the way forward (W). When using this sequence to help structure your coaching conversation, ensure you leave enough space at the end of your coaching session for the ‘way-forward’ questions. Here are a few of our favourites:
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Looking at your options, what actions stand out that will bring you just one step closer to your outcome?
What do you need to get these actions done?
When will you have completed these first action steps?
How will you hold yourself accountable to your plan?
Focus on Who Your Coachee Needs to BE to Bring Their Commitments to Life
The Be-Do-Have Coaching Model is a powerful way to delve into who your coachee needs to BE in order to achieve their goals. Who you want to BE, drives what you DO, which determines what you HAVE - and so the cycle repeats. Focusing on who your coachee needs to BE and what they must DO, is a powerful way to embed the results they want to HAVE as part of your coaching session close. Some questions might include:
Who do you need to BE at this moment to create the change?
What values do you need to keep front of mind?
What do you need to believe in order to make this happen?
Try on a New Belief or Reframe
Throughout your coaching session, your coachee may uncover some limiting beliefs or develop new thinking patterns through a powerful reframe. One way to further embed your coachee’s exploration and commitment to a new, more empowering belief is to have them literally ‘put it on and test it for size’ through the metaphor of the new belief as an item of clothing. Some questions might include:
What would it be if your new belief or reframe <insert new belief or reframe> were an item of clothing or accessory?
What colour would it be?
What is it made from?
Agree on a Way to Evaluate the Efforts (CREATE Model)
Developed by Aleisha Coote and Illaina Darvill, the CREATE Coaching Model is designed to anchor coaching conversations to our evolving context while creating a structured approach to explore reactions, aspirations, tests (or change experiments), and a process of evaluation.
The framework covers six key themes: (1) Context; (2) Reaction; (3) Explore; (4) Aspire; (5) Test; and (6) Evaluate. The Evaluate section of CREATE helps provide a wrap-up sequence to close your coaching session.
How will you measure the impact of your efforts?
How will you celebrate success?
If you fail, what might you learn?
Summarise the Coaching Session
As part of closing your coaching session, it is important to make the session feel complete and whole in its own right - even if it is part of a wider, ongoing series of coaching. The art of summarising can help you achieve this complete lens across the session. Key questions might include:
How would you summarise today’s session?
What has been the biggest win?
What do you now know about the situation that you didn’t already know?
What do you now know about yourself that you didn’t already know?
Acknowledge and Celebrate Success
As humans, we are wired to focus on the negative, which often overshadows our strengths. It is, therefore, a powerful technique to end a coaching session with reinforcements of acknowledgement to help your coachee celebrate their successes and what they've done well.
What are three things you want to acknowledge yourself for in our session today?
What are you most proud of?
How are you going to celebrate the work you've done today?
Leverage a Scale of Commitment
A scale of 1-10, where 10 is the highest, is a great tool to measure both your coachee's commitment to the coaching session and the current status of where they are with their challenge right now. You can then use this technique to close a coaching session and demonstrate the movement on the scale as a result of the session insights. Some questions might include:
At the beginning of our coaching session, you mentioned you felt you were at a <insert scale reference out of 10 from the beginning of the session> - I’m curious, following your new learning and insights from today’s session, where are you now on the scale?
What have been the biggest insights that have helped create this shift?
How will you maintain this shift?
Create a Book Chapter Title to Succinctly Capture the Theme of the Coaching Session
This technique is a great way to summarise the focus of the coaching session in a simple, easy-to-remember format by asking your coachee to summarise the session as a chapter in a book. To help build continuity between your coaching sessions, you could ask this question consistently at the end of each session. Then, by the end of a series of coaching sessions, you would have multiple chapters to reflect on with your coachee. We have included some additional questions that could help embed the overall learnings from the coaching journey (after multiple sessions).
What's the biggest 'win' you are taking from today's coaching session?
If this 'win' was a chapter in a book, what would the chapter be called?
Reflecting on the chapters of your book so far... when you combine all of these chapters as one, what might the title of your book be?
Future Pace
Future pacing is a technique from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) used to help your coachee visualise achieving their desired outcomes or goals. By visualising a specific outcome, your coachee starts to establish new neural pathways of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ to create different outcomes and results. Future pacing can help your coachee reframe their thinking by making their goals come to life in a more attainable visual. Examples of future-paced questions can include:
Imagine the possibility of <insert challenge or goal> what steps have you taken to get there?
When things get tough, how do you now do things differently?
When things are going well, how do you now celebrate success?
Close Your Coaching Session Through Mindfulness and Visualisation
Closing your coaching session through mindfulness and visualisation can help support your coachee to embed the insights from their session while creating a space of calmness and reflection in the session's final moments. Here is a helpful opening sequence:
Close your eyes and place your feet firmly on the ground. Notice the parts of your body that are against a solid surface of some sort. Notice the sensation against your body... and how the surfaces feel. Sink in. Now, with me, breathe in <count 2, 3, 4...>, hold <count 2,3, 4...>, exhale <count 2,3,4...>, and hold <count 2, 3, 4...>.
A full mindfulness and visualisation script is available in our quick-reference guide: 10 Techniques to Close a Coaching Session
Quick-Reference Guide: 10 Techniques to Close a Coaching Session
As you build your coaching skills, you will find a ‘session closing sequence’ that is most comfortable for you. And if these 10 suggested tips have provided a helpful start, then please check out our full quick-reference guide: 10 Techniques to Close a Coaching Session. With full scripts and more than 100 coaching questions, this resource guide is a great one to have on hand when it comes to create an effective close for your coaching sessions.
What we love about this guide:
Effective tips and tools for new coaches and people leaders.
Introduction copy helps you understand the context of each tool and technique.
Questions and scripts can be scanned as a quick reference, or read the questions directly from the guide if coaching virtually.
The design of the tools helps set up an effective closing sequence for your coaching sessions.
Plus, we’ve created a complimentary guide for 10 Techniques to Open a Coaching Session - must-have back-pocket resources for coaches
Enjoy,