Coaching session questions by stage: a question bank, and where each answer gets written down

The techniques that keep a client engaged in session are the ones ICF lists beside powerful questioning: silence, metaphor, analogy. Then read the client’s own words back to them. Writing those words down is the step the published question lists leave out. Take one question from your bank and ask where its answer gets recorded a week later. Call it the slot test.

A coach on r/lifecoaching asked the sub how they keep track of notes for each client.

What are some good open questions for coaching?

A good open question starts with what or how, names no solution, and belongs to one stage of the session. Grouped that way, with the source of each:

• Opening. “What would you like to have happen at the end of the session?” (Powerful Coaching Questions, lifecoachcertification.com.)
• Exploring. “What is your definition of being stuck?” and “What is standing between you and your goals?” (The ICF’s own 35 Coaching Questions for When Your Client Is Stuck.)
• Options. “What would better look like?” and “When is this less of a problem?” (Wholebeing Institute.)
• Commitment. “What am I imagining will happen? What am I most nervous will happen?” (Handed to the client by one r/lifecoaching poster.)
• Close. No new question. Read back what the client said they would do, in the client’s words.

GROW’s questions sit on a page of box prompts. Co-Active Training Institute publishes its set on its blog. Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit is another, and his questions belong in it.

What are the 10 best questions to ask during a coaching session?

Count is the wrong axis. The ICF lists 35 for a stuck client, Workhuman 42 under GROW, Full Focus 6, and a LinkedIn piece 14, and none of them is wrong.

Pick whatever number fits your session, then spend the effort on asking fewer properly: ask, wait through the silence, and ask the client to put the same thing as a picture. Those techniques cost nothing, and none of them involves answering the question for the client.

Where does each answer get written down, and by whom?

An answer gets written in one of five places, and the writer changes with each. These questions sit inside a coaching session template; prices come off each vendor’s own pricing page, pulled 2026-10-06.

Where the answer goes	Who writes it	Written as your questions	Price
Your notebook	You, in the call	Yes, if you wrote the bank
Simply.Coach session notes	You, after the call	Not stated	US$9 to US$69 a month
Paperbell			$970 a year, against $1164
Fathom call summary	The AI, from the recording	Not stated	$0 free, $20 a month Premium
Ember	The AI you already use, into your boxes	Yes, you write each box’s prompt	$0 for four reports a month, or $8 a month billed yearly

I build Ember, and it is in closed beta. Nothing in its facts says it supplies the questions, so a row for that would read not stated.

Fathom says its Enterprise tier has organization-wide security controls. That is Fathom’s claim, not my finding.

Run the slot test on your own bank before the next session. A question with no slot is one you will ask again next month.

Questions people ask next?

What are the 7 coaching questions?

The sets I can point to do not agree on seven, or on any number. They come from the ICF, from Wholebeing Institute, and from coaches posting on r/lifecoaching, each credited above with where it is published.

Can I record the session instead of writing the answers down?

Fathom’s free plan includes unlimited recordings and instant call summaries at $0, pulled 2026-10-06, but a summary of the call is not a record of your questions. Consent rules vary by jurisdiction, so ask your client first.

Should the question order change between sessions?

Keep the five stages fixed and let the questions inside each move with what the client brings. A fixed template whose boxes flex per session applies the same rule to the write-up.