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Life Coaching Questions For A Powerful Intake

Try using these 18 powerful and in depth life coaching questions as part of your intake process. They will save lots of getting to know you conversations and give you (and your clients) valuable insight and a flying start beginning to the coaching journey.

I also show you how to present the benefit of answering these questions to the client.

Quick Links

1.Why ask in-depth intake questions?

2. 18 Powerful intake questions

3. Presenting the questions to clients

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Why Ask Powerful and Deep Life Coaching Intake Questions?

I found that asking new clients to answer the following powerful intake questions as part of my Welcome Pack and before the first session, a fabulous time-saving way of getting to know them and a snapshot of where they are in their life.

18 questions to ask new clients as part of the intake process

As you will see from my suggestions on how to introduce coaching intake questions, further down this page, you may need to engage the new client in the benefit of this process.

The feedback I've had is that answering these questions was really valuable in helping them get clarity on where they are and where they want to go with coaching to compliment what we may have discussed during their Discovery Session.

Of course you don’t have to stick exactly to the life coaching questions I've suggested, or use them all, so feel free to add your own version which might be relevant to your coaching niche or speciality.

However, I've found the answers to these questions provide a great starting point for getting to know more deeply what issues may need to be addressed and where your new clients' pain points may actually be.

If you think of any I might want to add, do contact me via my contact Wendy form.

18 In-Depth Intake Questions For New Clients?

These are open ended questions that although, in some cases, may be challenging for the client to answer, they demand thoughtful and revealing answers. Here are my 18 Life Coaching Questions to use adapt and use as part of your intake process.

Also a client may choose not to answer a specific questions. Don't force it. Just maybe question for the reason or leave it alone to mention further, when appropriate, further down the coaching journey.

Energy and passion:
Where do you get your energy – what motivates and turns you on? What are your passionate about?
Emotion:
What moves you to tears of joy/sorrow?
Pleasure:
How do you like to enjoy yourself? What do you enjoy doing?
Stress release:
What do you find works for you to make you feel better when you are experiencing stress?
Responsibility:
Where are you likely to be most irresponsible?
Control:
What emotion (anger, fear, anxiety, etc) may make you feel most out of control?
Sabotage:
How might you sabotage your coaching progress and our professional relationship?
Results:
How will you know how effective our coaching has been?
Feedback:
Are you willing to tell me if you feel our coaching needs to go in a different direction or give me any other honest feedback.
Coaching preference:
How can I best coach you? For instance, do you like lots of structure or things done informally or a mix of both?
Goals:
Do you understand that I will support YOU, not just your goals?
Values:
What are your values – the things in life that are really important to you? If you are not sure of this we will find out as part of the coaching process.
Business/career opportunities:
What business/career opportunities you are currently not making the most/anything of?
Personal Aspirations:
What are three personal desires you are currently not pursuing?
Poor relationships:
Is there anyone in your life who is constantly putting you down, making you feel inadequate or whom you feel you have to tread carefully around?
Challenges:
What is the biggest challenge you have in your life right now?
Priority:
What is your most urgent problem?
Regrets: (optional question)
What are the biggest regret you have in your life:
Personal; Career/Business.

How Do You Introduce Coaching Intake Questions To Clients?

A key part of establishing rapport with your new client is how you present your introductory material after they have committed to working with you. I used to send a "Welcome To Coaching" email and include my 18 coaching intake questions, the coaching agreement, my invoice and any processes that were appropriate to the client.

To avoid any resistance from the client in being asked to answer these, maybe confronting, questions even before their first session, it's important you explain to them benefits. To help with this I have written below an introduction to the questions which you can adapt to your own style, preferences, specialty or niche.

I'd include this written preamble on the question form.

Hi ........

"I'd like you to reflect on the following questions about yourself. They help me get to know you, save session time and really help our coaching to get off to a powerful flying start.

Answer what you can the best you can. Even if you find some of these thought-provoking questions challenging, try and answer them anyway.

The answers will allow me to get to quickly know you better and enable me to coach you more powerfully. The answers may also give you some great insights you hadn't realised.

There are no rights or wrongs. Your answers to can be as long or short as you like. The purpose is to give us an overview of where you are at in your life/business/profession and to get you thinking forward.

We will debrief your answers, where necessary, at our first session."

When should the coaching intake questions be given to the client?

And ideal time to present these intake questions is you are talking to them at the wrap up of the successful Discovery Session and you set the date of the first formal session. Let them know you are sending the questions and get their commitment to send them back before the first session.

You can also personally explain the benefits as well and the written introduction. It's also useful to send a follow up text reminder about the session and the questions.

I suggest when you send the intake questions to the client you do it in Microsoft Word (or a similar editable format).

I find this is better than using a PDF because it makes the process easier for them to answer, directly under the questions on their device and sending it back without the need for printing out. Or you may prefer to use one of the Google Forms to create your own questionnaire.

More Poweful Questsions for All Coaching Situations

555 Powerful Questions in Coaching, Mentoring and Leading at Work by Mauricio Vasquez.

If you find it a challenge thinking of the right questions to ask in any coaching situation, 555 Powerful Questions for Coaching, Mentoring and Leading at Work by Mauricio Vasquez is a handy book to invest in for all areas of coaching.

You can have a peek in the book before a session with a client, when you know certain issues are going to come up, and find some relevant powerful questions to ask.

The book is divided into numerous sections for questions in various coaching situations, such as Action, Accountability, Goals, Change, Decisions and so on.

I hope these Life Coaching Questions for intake and suggestions have given you some good strategies for easily getting to know the client and what they need in that first session. If you think of another great question to ask, do let me know via my contact form.

More help to grow your coaching skills and promote yourself

I have written a wide range of informative books (all from my own 25+ years experience) that will help you to authentically attract new quality clients, increase your coaching skills and promote your coaching services.

eBook - Mastering the Coaching Discovery Session by Wendy Buckingham