If you’re beginning to work as a coach, or have been coaching for a while but haven’t kept a record of your sessions, now is a good time to start tracking your coaching hours.
Whether you apply for an ICF or an EMCC credential, you will be asked information about your coaching practice. Having an updated log will help you access it in one click. Even if you are not aiming for a credential, a coaching log is still a good tool to measure data on your coaching business, like the number of clients, the number of sessions per client and per month, etc.
The coaching log can be a simple spreadsheet with minimal information about your clients and their sessions. For this, you don’t really not need a template. Jot down in each column your client’s name, their email address, the date and length of the session and voilà, you have started your coaching log.
The coaching log we’ve built is also a spreadsheet, but it expands a bit what you will be tracking. Here’s how we built it:
1st tab – Session log
The first tab is where you will add each session you are completing. You’ll add your client’s information, whether the session was individual or group coaching, the length and date of the session, as well as the type of session (paid or probono). If you want to add more columns to track other data (e.g. career coaching, leadership coaching, etc.) you can add them. The typical ICF coaching log stops there.
2nd tab – CPD log
We’ve added a few more tabs that will help you keep track of other very important information. The second tab is about your continuing professional development. There will come a time where you have to submit a list of all that you did for your development, beyond your coach training, and it will be a struggle for you to remember all that you did and how much time you spent on each developmental activity. We’re inviting you to keep track of this information in the same document as the information about your sessions, so you don’t have to look for it in the future.
3rd tab – Reflective log
We’ve also added a reflective log, which you can use if you are not reflecting on your practice yet. This can be a great start to think about your coaching approach and your clients. You’ll start seeing patterns emerge and you can then decide what to do about it, maybe work with a mentor coaching or a supervisor.
4th tab – Client feedback log
Finally, we’ve also added a tab so you can keep track of the feedback you receive from clients. In the EMCC credential application, you will be asked to submit some client testimonials. If you have received some but you don’t know where they are (by email, but which email address and when was it sent?), you’ll spend a lot of time looking for it. Use this log to keep them in one place.
We hope you make the most of this template and that it inspires you to think about the information you can draw from it to become a better coach and build an even more successful practice.
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