15 Coaching Techniques That Work For Any Niche or Client

Have you ever been stuck with a client and not sure which strategy to use to help them get results?

In this blog post, we’ll cover 15 different coaching techniques that can be used by any coach and for any coaching client. I’ll also include a link to tools that support each technique. 

I’ve personally gotten multiple coaching certifications and tried what feels like a million techniques, and at the end of the day, the simple universal techniques work better than any of the complicated strategies that coaches use today. 

The coaching techniques I show you today will help you look more professional, help your clients get results, and allow you to feel confident in your ability to help them transform. 

 Let’s get started!

What are Coaching Techniques?

A coaching technique is a strategy that is used with coaching tools to help a client breakthrough. Every coach has different techniques depending on their niche and training. However, there are some universal coaching techniques and tools that can be used by any coach.

The Best Coaching Techniques

1. SMART Goal Setting

Do your clients need help setting SMART goals? Get them moving with the SMART goal-setting coaching technique! This is one of the most popular and oldest coaching techniques and it works!

Setting SMART goals ensures that your clients are focused on the next steps needed to progress, but that they are not being unrealistic. SMART goals are crucial to success in both the long and short term.

SMART goals are a key aspect of coaching. A SMART goal is a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. 

• Specific: it is clearly defined. 
• Measurable: it is easy to judge if you have succeeded. 
• Achievable: it can be done. 
• Realistic: you have thought about your resources and constraints when setting the goal. 
• Timely: it is important to your progress right now that you achieve this goal.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: NAIL THAT GOAL – SMART GOALS >>

2. Personal Values Identification

There is no point in setting goals and objectives that don’t align with your client’s values! The personal values identification exercises help your clients figure out what their top, most important values in life are, and how these can be aligned with their current actions.

This technique will help motivate you both to find ways to create inspiration, and will also let you know what motivators or choices to avoid.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: PERSONAL VALUES IDENTIFICATION WORKBOOK >>

3. Personal Mission Statement

Similar to the values identification coaching technique, the personal mission statement helps your client figure out where they are going in life – not just what they think is important. What do they wish to achieve? What do they want to be remembered for, and how can they manage that?

A personal mission statement aims to express the client’s goal in life in just a few short sentences. Help your client draft and explore this mission statement to give you both a sense of the overall goal.

The personal values identification works like the compass to steer you toward this goal, determining the course your client will take, while the mission statement determines the destination.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT GENERATOR WORKBOOK >>

4. Self Discovery Exercises

Does your client know much about themselves? Do they recognize their strengths and weaknesses? 

Doing some exercises in self-discovery is crucial to ensuring a client understands who they are.

You can then help them to determine which qualities they value most by crossing out the ones that they feel are less important.

This helps to mitigate the influence of what society deems important, and lets the client get a better grip on what they think matters about their character and personality.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: TROLL TRAVELS – WHO AM I – SELF-DISCOVERY EXERCISE >>

5. Daily Gratitude

You’re likely to be aware of the power of gratitude, but if you’re not already using daily gratitude with your clients, it’s time to start. Talk to them about making a space every day for gratitude – often focusing on the little things.

It’s usually best for this exercise to be completed at the end of the day, before going to sleep. This can help to create a positive mindset for rest, and will help them to consider the day as a whole, making it easier to soften any negative experiences.

Encourage your client to actively write down the things they are thankful for, ensuring they spend time and thought on the exercise.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: DAILY GRATITUDE DIARY TEMPLATE >>

6. Spheres of Influence

If your client is feeling drained and excessively stressed, this is an important technique to help them.

We only have limited control over the things in our life; we cannot, for example, stop accidents from happening or change major political events.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything going on in life, but the spheres of influence technique will help your client to focus on the things they can actually influence and change. This will help them to feel empowered.

Worrying about things outside your control is mentally draining and often makes you feel frozen, unable to deal with even the things you can handle. It’s important to try and shift your client’s focus to the areas where they can make a difference.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: SPHERES OF INFLUENCE COACHING EXERCISE >>

7. Urgent Important Matrix

Time management is something many of your clients will struggle with, and it’s a hard one to tackle. Stress about time results in much lower productivity overall, which only increases the stress; your client can’t work well if they are checking the clock every thirty seconds.

Introduce them to the Urgent Important Matrix, which will encourage them to rank their tasks by priority. Important tasks are those that lead to the achievement of a goal. Urgent tasks are those that demand immediate attention.

Your client can then rank the tasks, putting those that are both urgent and important at the top, followed by important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and finally neither important nor urgent.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: URGENT IMPORTANT MATRIX TEMPLATE AND WORKSHEET >>

8. Weekly Success Planning

Your client will benefit considerably from having a weekly plan that tells them what they need to get done for the week, and identifies any potential obstructions they may face.

The weekly plan should let them know where they will stand by the end of the week.

It’s important to supplement weekly plans with check-ins. There is no point in having a weekly plan if neither you nor the client ever checks what was achieved and what wasn’t.

Take some time to sit down and see if some goals are consistently being unmet, and why that may be.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: WEEKLY SUCCESS PLANNING TOOL >>

9. Coaching Questions

Spend some time asking your client questions about their motives and desires. Ask what they want from coaching, and aim to get specific answers that will let you provide them with the support they expect and crave. 

Keep probing deeper, and explore shallow answers until you get to the nub of an issue. This is crucial to understanding your client and helping them understand themselves. These questions should help with goal creation and motivation later.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: POWERFUL PONDERING QUESTIONS TOOL >>

10. SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 

This is another helpful technique to use with your client, encouraging them to think about areas that they excel in and advantages they can tap into, but also their weak areas and issues that they may face.

Do this exercise for both work and personal life – it’s important to be well-rounded. If your client is a leader at work, does that cause problems with stubbornness or taking on too much responsibility at home?

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: PERSONAL SWOT EXERCISE >>

11. Not-To Do Lists

Everyone is familiar with the to-do list and how it can help productivity, but the not-to do list brings a whole new spin on it, and can be just as helpful. It helps your client hone in on the things that they should stop doing.

This could be anything, such as “checking Facebook at work,” or “leaving emails on unread.” Often, a not-to do list is about cutting negative habits, but it can be about anything. It will usually inspire a to-do list as well; if so, that’s great!

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: NOT TO-DO LIST EXERCISE! >>

12. Love and Loathe List

This list aims to help clients identify what they enjoy doing and what they hate doing so they can do more of the former and less of the latter. Use it to help them see when they should look at delegating a task to someone else who might enjoy it more/do it better.

This isn’t about only doing the fun things in life; it’s about helping your client identify where they excel and feel good, and encouraging them to focus on those areas more heavily so they can work at their best.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: LOVE AND LOATHE LIST EXERCISE >>

13. Eat Your Elephant

How would you eat an elephant? Most people wouldn’t, but if you had to, there’s only one answer – one bite at a time. Help your client apply this philosophy to their tasks. They have huge tasks that they don’t know how to handle? Break them down.

Encourage your client to look at the tasks they are faced with and determine which are the most overwhelming. For each, write down what the very first step is, and help them to complete this step. This can then be transferred to the second step, which should also be completed.

Soon, the client will be immersed in the project, and it will no longer seem overwhelming.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: EAT YOUR ELEPHANT WORKSHEET >>

14. Letting Go

When something is bothering you, it can be very hard to let it go – as your clients are probably well aware. You should address this by asking what value they get from holding onto the thing that is upsetting them.

Do they gain something by feeling upset by it? Does it change the circumstances or make something better? On the flip side, what are they sacrificing by allowing something to upset them? How is it having a negative impact?

Help your clients to learn how to make peace with the things that anger or hurt them; they will have more focus to give to the important things they can change.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: WHAT DO YOU NEED TO LET GO OF EXERCISE >>

15. Cartesian Questions

Cartesian questions are four questions that will help your clients get a better grip on what things block their decisions, and what things push them to make a decision. This can help improve their decision-making overall, allowing them to better understand when to say yes and when to say no.

Clients will gain a stronger grasp of the emotional factors that direct them one way or another and will be able to control these more effectively to make truly valuable decisions, rather than ones that purely come from a place of emotion.

✍🏽 RECOMMENDED COACHING TOOL: EXPAND YOUR MIND – CARTESIAN QUESTIONS >>

Final Thoughts

Thanks to ‘15 Coaching Techniques That Work For Any Niche or Client’, you don’t need to google a million coaching tools to figure out how to help your clients. You have everything you need in one place. 

As you saw in the post, coaching techniques are powerful ways to develop your signature coaching style, and when you find the right ones that work for you, you become a better coach. Without the right coaching techniques, it can be a struggle to keep and retain clients and find that unique thing that is special to you. 

Before you get started with coaching techniques, make sure you leave a quick comment and let me know what you think of this post!