Templates
5 Coaching Session Note Templates You Can Reuse Every Week
A template only earns its place if it's faster to use than writing from a blank page. Below are five layouts built for different kinds of coaching sessions. Pick one, paste it into a note-taking app or doc, and fill in the blanks right after each call.
1. The general-purpose session note
Use this for a standard recurring coaching session with no special structure.
- Client / date:
- One-line summary:
- Key discussion points: (2–5 bullets)
- Decisions or insights:
- Action items (owner · due):
- Open questions for next time:
- Dates / deadlines mentioned:
This is the workhorse template. If you only adopt one, adopt this one — see the fuller reasoning in how to take coaching session notes.
2. The goal-check template (for milestone or quarterly reviews)
- Goal(s) under review:
- Progress since last review: what moved, what didn't
- Obstacles named by the client:
- Revised goal or target, if changed:
- Action items (owner · due):
- Next review date:
This works well every 4–8 sessions when you step back from the week-to-week and check overall trajectory rather than the immediate topic.
3. The first-session intake template
New clients need a slightly different shape since there's no prior note to build on.
- Presenting goal(s): in the client's own words
- Context: role, situation, relevant background
- Constraints: time, budget, other stakeholders
- Success criteria: how will they know this worked
- Cadence agreed: frequency, format, duration
- First action items:
More on setting this up well in setting up a note-taking system for a new coaching client.
4. The GROW-structured template
If you run sessions using the GROW model, your notes can mirror the four stages directly:
- Goal: what the client wants from this session
- Reality: current situation, as described by the client
- Options: paths considered
- Will: what they've committed to, with owner and date
The full breakdown of this approach, including sample questions for each stage, is in using the GROW model to structure your session notes.
5. The short check-in template (for brief accountability calls)
Not every session is a full hour. For 15–20 minute accountability check-ins:
- Committed last time: pull directly from the prior note's action items
- Status: done / partial / not started, one line each
- Blockers:
- New commitment: owner · due
This template is deliberately short because the session itself is short. For a fuller breakdown of tracking commitments across sessions, see how to track client action items.
Pick one and stick with it. Switching templates every few sessions defeats the purpose — the value comes from being able to scan five months of notes and know exactly where to look for the action items or the open questions, because they're always in the same place.
Where to keep them
The template matters less than where it lives. A doc-per-client that you can search is usually enough for a small caseload. Past 10–15 active clients, most coaches move to a table or lightweight CRM so action items and dates can be filtered across everyone at once, not just within a single client's file. Either way, keep the same section headers everywhere so nothing gets lost in translation between formats.
Adapting a template without breaking it
Templates are a starting point, not a straitjacket. It's fine to add a field that matters for your specific practice — a "mood/energy" line if you coach around wellbeing topics, or a "budget discussed" line if you consult on financial decisions. The rule that keeps a customized template useful is additive-only: add fields if a specific pattern in your work calls for them, but never remove the five core fields (summary, discussion points, decisions, action items, open questions/dates). Those five hold up across almost any coaching or consulting context, and removing one is usually where a "streamlined" template quietly stops being useful six months later.
A note on formatting, not just content
Two templates with identical fields can still feel very different to use if one relies on long-form paragraphs and the other uses short bullets. For scanning speed — which is the whole point of a template — bullets consistently win over paragraphs for every section except the one-line summary and the decisions line, which read better as full sentences. Resist the urge to write session notes the way you'd write a report; a note you'll actually reread benefits from being terse.
Testing a template before committing to it
Before adopting any of the five templates above as your default, run it against your last two or three real sessions (retroactively, from memory or existing notes) and see how it feels to fill in. If a section consistently sits empty, it might not fit your typical session shape. If you find yourself wanting to add a section every time, that's a sign the template is missing something structural for your practice, not just for one unusual session.
Templates for group or team coaching
If any of your work involves group sessions rather than one-on-one, the general-purpose template still applies with one adjustment: action items need an owner per person, not just per group, since "the group will follow up" reliably means nobody does. A simple table — participant name, commitment, due date — inside the action items section handles this without needing a separate template altogether.
Digital vs. handwritten templates
Some coaches genuinely prefer taking rough notes on paper during a session and typing up the structured version afterward, rather than typing directly during the call. Either approach works with any of these templates — the format matters far less than making sure the handwritten fragments actually get converted into the structured version soon after, rather than staying as loose paper notes that never make it into a searchable record.
Copy any of these into a doc and reuse them by hand, or skip the retyping entirely: paste your transcript or raw notes into SessionScribe and it fills this same structure in automatically.