Asking coaching clients to share their feedback is a way for coaches to make sure their practice is aligned with their goals and needs. Many coaches don’t have a process that makes collecting feedback systematic and consistent. Some of them don’t ask feedback at all, others ask it from time to time, but regular feedback helps coaches to identify areas of improvement and align with the expectations of clients.
In this article, we will explore the different moments of the coaching when you can request feedback from your clients.
You can collect your client’s feedback about their first session to make sure it was aligned with what they expected, what you contracted for, and to address any potential barriers or misunderstandings from the beginning.
If you have a set number of sessions, you can request feedback halfway through the coaching engagement, to identify if changes need to happen for the second half.
For ongoing coaching engagements which don’t have a set end date, you can request feedback on a regular basis, every few months depending on how many sessions you have per month with the client
When the coaching engagement finishes, you can collect feedback to measure your client’s overall satisfaction, what they take away from the coaching, and what their coaching experience was like. You may also ask for a client testimonial if you wish to do so.
You can, if you want, ask for feedback after each session. In this case, we recommend to keep the feedback form very succinct, with a simple satisfaction scale (1 to 5 or 1 to 7) and an optional field that clients can fill in if they want to write something.
If you choose to send your clients a feedback form after every session, make sure you mention it to your clients in your agreement, to explain that it is part of your coaching process.
You may also contract with your clients that you will send them a follow-up feedback form a few months after their last session to check in with them and to measure the long-term impact that coaching has had. This is also a chance for you to engage again with your former clients and to nurture those relationships after the coaching has ended.
Think about what you hope to get from asking feedback to your clients and what would work for them and for you. You can create different feedback forms depending on when you choose to send them.
The idea is for you to create a process that becomes an integral part of the way you onboard your clients and manage your working relationships with them.
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