How to Choose a Coaching Topic
You are the only person who can own the agenda of your growth.
What follows are my top tips on how to choose a meaningful topic of focus for a coaching session. I say “coaching” because I’m a coach, but I believe this is a good place to start for other one-on-one development conversations, like mentorship or counseling. If you’re a coach, this could also help you guide your clients if they need a bit of a nudge.
So how do I think about this? I’m a generalist when it comes to my coaching practice. My clients are largely investors, executives, and startup CEOs, but thematically what we end up working on is all over the personal and professional spectrum. Many of my clients arrive with a clear agenda and what they want to work on. And still many are still bringing the details into focus, or maybe revisiting their goals with coaching as we progress.
For almost every coaching session, the topic of discussion is up to my clients. My coaching is process-oriented and my clients own the content of their goals and outcomes. I thought-partner and challenge along the way, but my clients’ growth needs to be important enough to them that they’re unwilling to delegate it to me and unwilling to settle for superficial results.
