Last updated August 14, 2024
If you are teaching Coaching Skills be it to employees, managers, students, or other adults in workshops or training sessions, you might find these 12 coaching skills activities useful!
Coaching Skills Activities & Exercises
1. Silent Coaching
Time needed: 30 minutes (but adapt to an hour-long activity as needed).
Intention: In terms of coaching skills activities, this is one of the activities that participants tend to enjoy most of all. Silent Coaching is a coaching exercise that involves participants having to coach without any verbal cues and is difficult but great fun.
Number of participants: I suggest groups of 4 but you can also have participants work in pairs as needed.
How to run the activity: Start by explaining to the participants that they will use non-verbal communication, in the form of gestures (like a shake of the head), facial expressions (like a surprised look), and by drawing things to communicate and convey what it is they are trying to coach for this activity.
Explain to them that a great coach uses not only verbal communication but a log of non-verbal communication.
To get started, give each group a piece of paper with a simple expression on it such as “I love football” or “I’m very happy”. This must convey this without saying any spoken words.
Now give them a slightly more complex sentence such as “Your best career path is one where you build on the things you love”. Rotate each person in the group so that they each get to try and express one sentence each to their group.
You can then build this to provide participants with more complex sentences/scenarios to portray.
Note also that those in the group who are trying to work out the phrase must also remain silent, but they can interact through signs.
2. Strengths-Based Coaching
Time Needed: 60 minutes.
Intention: This activity is aimed at understanding our own strengths and how we might use these skills when providing coaching to others.
Number of People Needed: 4 or more participants.
How to Run the Activity: This is one of those rare times when I recommend a 3rd party website to run an activity, but I think you will see why.
For this activity, I recommend using the strengths assessment tool Gallup StrengthsFinder (but if you can find a different one no problem as the activity will be the same – and I have no affiliation with the aforementioned tool).
Ask everyone to complete a strengths assessment and when that’s done, place the participants into pairs.
The pairs will discuss with each other the top strengths they have (as shown in the assessment test) and they will discuss how they might best use these skills as a coach.
If you wish to save time, you might want to ask participants to do their assessment beforehand.
3. Feedback Exchange Circles
Time needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: When providing coaching, it is essential to learn how to give feedback constructively and in a helpful and supportive manner. This activity helps participants learn some of these feedback skills.
This activity works best when employees already know each other.
Number of participants: Any number but I recommend splitting people into groups of 6 or 7 people.
How to run the activity: If you have not already done so as part of the lesson you are teaching, I’d recommend explaining to participants that with feedback it is important not to focus on the personal traits that someone might have, but instead to focus on specific actions of behaviors.
Furthermore, to diffuse potential conflict, use the ‘I’ form when giving feedback.
So, for example, you might say “I have noticed that you are late back from work every lunchtime” rather than “Everyone has noticed…….”.
Place everyone into pairs and have them give feedback to each other (one person giving the feedback to start with and then they rotate).
They will need though to follow this guide:
- Strengths: Each person will provide positive feedback to their partner (based on a recent achievement or something they’ve done well).
- Areas for Improvement: This is where feedback when coaching someone gets tricky as many people will automatically become defensive unless you approach this in the right manner.
- Other feedback – that they wish to give.
If needed, the areas for improvement can be a fictitious scenario that you provide for participants but that still gives them the chance to consider how they could best provide feedback.
Have each person in the group have a chance to be given feedback.
4. Values Clarification
Time Needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: This is one of the best coaching skills activities for understanding the core values of individuals in the team. You can provide better coaching if you understand the motivation behind the person you are coaching.
Items needed:
How to Run the Activity: Start by explaining to participants that the aim of this activity is to understand what their core values are as these values are central to effective coaching.
Now hand participants a copy of the core values handout (or send it to them digitally) and ask them to consider each of the 21 core values and which ones are most important to them. They should take 5 to 10 minutes to ponder this.
Participants should now spend another 5 minutes to rank each of the 21 values and to give each a rank of 1 to 21, with 1 being the most important.
I would recommend then having a group discussion and starting this by asking each person to read out their top 3 personal value choices.
If you have access to a whiteboard, it can be worth writing the top 3 answers on the whiteboard to see which answers come up the most times regards what the most common core values are.
One question in particular that I like to ask the group for this discussion is to consider:
- How do these top core values they chose, relate to their decision-making?
- How can these core values be integrated into their work-life and out of work-life?
- If trust, loyalty and creativity were the top three choices, how can these values be connected with your personal and work growth?
5. Video Feedback Review
Time needed: 60 minutes (but can be adapted to be longer as needed).
Intention: Being able to see ourselves on video after being recorded can give us an amazing opportunity to learn about our own mannerisms, body language, and the expressions we use.
It is one of the effective self-reflection exercises and can be extremely useful for coaching skills so that we can, in the future, present our best self to those that we coach.
It can be quite intimidating at first to be recorded and then see ourselves on playback, making it one of the hardest coaching skills activities for participants, but this is perhaps the best way to learn and to then develop confidence.
Number of Participants: This activity can be done in pairs or in groups of 4.
Materials Needed: With most of us having a smartphone with a camera on it these days, this is the easiest tool to use for video-making for activities. Smartphone tripods can also be extremely useful if you can provide them.
Note: Do though ensure that a person’s video of themself is recorded on their own phone so that they can easily delete it as needed at the end of the session.
How to run the activity: Put participants into pairs and ask one to be the coach and one the coachee, to start off with.
Then provide each pair with a scenario. You will need to pre-plan these but you just need a sentence such as:
- “You are helping the coaches with their career path planning”
- or “You are helping the coaches reduce their stress at work”.
(It can be worth reading about the difference between coaching vs mentoring).
Have them record the role play on their phone. For privacy as needed, they can just record themself on their own phone.
Have the participants change roles so that the coach now becomes the coachee.
Give them 5 minutes for each scenario, i.e. one as the coach and one as the coachee.
Ask them to stop the recording and to now watch the videos back in their pairs.
They should make notes about what they learn including:
- How well do they listen (or not listen)?
- Do they fidget?
- Do they communicate well and clearly?
- What about their body language?
If you wish to, you can end this activity by bringing everyone together as a group and asking them to volunteer any ideas and things they learned, to the group.
6. Coaching Relay
Time needed: 60 minutes.
Intention: This is one of the coaching skills exercises that I have used often and that works well for helping participants learn about coaching.
The activity involves having more than one coach to help provide the coaching needed for a particular person. This is also great for helping teach listening skills and it also brings together teamwork with adaptability skills and coaching.
Number of Participants: 5+ participants.
How to run the activity: In this activity, participants will continue on from each other to build the coaching narrative, and this will involve listening carefully and building on what’s been offered by the person before them.
Break participants up into groups of 5 and ask them to allocate one person in their group to be the coachee (the person who will be coached).
Now give each group a handout with a scenario on it. It can be a simple scenario such as the ones you might have used in activity No.5 regards:
- “You are helping the coaches with their career path planning”
- “You are helping the coaches reduce their stress at work”.
Now inform the participants that they will have 5 minutes each to coach the coachee one a time. As one person is doing the coaching in the group, the other 3 who will coach after must listen carefully as they will need to add to the coaching narrative. After 5 minutes is up, the 2nd coach in the group will continue the coaching and so on.
Each new coach should try to continue the narrative and do so such that the transition is natural and smooth.
After the 20 minutes is up, let the group discuss for 5 minutes how it all went.
I then suggest handing them another scenario, changing who the coachee will be, and running the activity again.
At the end, you might want to have a group discussion about the experience of the coaching relay, how it was easy/hard to add seamlessly and to listen attentively.
7. Coaching Journal
Time Needed: Ongoing (1 hour a month group session for example).
Intention: This is a combination of a monthly coaching support group and an individual coaching skills exercise designed to help you self-reflect as you offer coaching to others, while also having the chance to discuss coaching and support and be supported by other coaches.
Number of People Needed: In this activity (you might be an HR manager for example) you bring together managers and employees who are coaching others so the number is not set.
Bring them together for a monthly session ( I suggest for one hour) and start by providing them with a journal that will become their Coaching Journal.
Explain to participants that they will write their reflections on their experiences of coaching, in the journal. They should include things such as:
- Challenges they’ve had
- Coaching questions they have
- Thoughts, ideas, and anything they’ve learned worth noting
For this first session, I recommend a small group discussion and then a class discussion on their experiences to date. Invite those with more experience to offer any insights, ideas, questions, and thoughts of the rest of the group.
When you bring them together for the second and other forthcoming monthly sessions, use their journal writings as the basis for the sessions.
If there are lots of questions people ask, let the class discuss the best solutions and ideas.
If someone has had problems, they can discuss these and get peer support.
>> See the Coaching Skills Training course materials
8. Questioning Techniques
Time Needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: Being able to ask open-ended questions for coaching (just as one would for qualitative research) is useful so that we ask the RIGHT questions in order to help guide the coachee. One of the best tools for coaches is the ability to know how to ask the right questions.
Number of People Needed: 4+ participants.
How to Run the Activity: if you have not already as part of the session you are teaching, compile a list of open-ended and closed questions to ensure that participants have a clear understanding of the difference between open and closed questions.
Now place participants into pairs and ask them to choose a topic (or you might wish to provide them with a list of topics to choose from related to their industry or area of study).
Now ask them to spend 10 minutes discussing the topic BUT they must focus on asking open-ended questions to keep the conversation going.
One person though will ask the question as open-ended questions and the other person will answer the questions. If the person notices the asker using a closed question they should ask the other person to re-ask the question.
After 10 minutes, rotate the person who is the asker and the answerer.
9. Coaching Fishbowl
Time Needed: 60 minutes.
Intention: This is one of the best coaching exercises to learn about observation and seeing what works and what works less well.
Number of People Needed: 8+ participants.
How to Run the Activity: You need to put 2 or 3 chairs in the middle of a circle and then place the remaining chairs, for the rest of the participants, on the outside of the circle.
Now ask for 2 or 3 volunteers to sit inside the fishbowl, i.e. to be observed as they sit in the middle of the circle, or choose three participants.
Now provide the participants inside the fishbowl (inner seats) with a scenario whereby one person will be the coachee (person coached) and the other 1 or 2 will be coaches.
Do emphasise that only constructive criticism should be used and that it is sometimes very hard to be the one being observed so ask participants to be fair and take this into consideration as the observer.
Now allow 10 minutes for the scenario to take place and, while it does, the participants on the outside of the circle (the observers) must observe the body language used, the mannerisms, the words used, etc. and anything else they notice from the scenario being played out.
You might then want to rotate who is in the fishbowl and who the observers are after 10 minutes.
At the end of the activity, have a class discussion about their observations, what coaching skills were good, and what might have been done better.
10. Emotional Rollercoaster
Time needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: In order to be an effective coach, you need, as the coach, to be able to handle your emotions well and have good emotional intelligence skills. This activity helps with building emotional intelligence during coaching skills practice.
Number of Participants: 4+ participants.
How to run the activity: In advance of this activity, you will need to prepare a couple of scenarios that are high-pressure and stressful situations that one might be involved with as a coach.
So for example, you might want to use scenarios such as:
- The person you are coaching has received terrible feedback from colleagues and is trying to deal with it and find a way forward, and the coachee is very emotional.
- The coachee has been involved in quite a bad argument with another colleague and they are still upset with the way HR has managed things. You are in charge of trying to coach them to overcome this issue.
A good way to get participants ready for this activity is to begin with a quick exercise by taking 30 seconds to try each of these:
- Think about a time when you were very happy.
- Think about a time when you felt surprised.
- Think about a situation at work or when studying when you felt overwhelmed.
Now divide participants into pairs and provide each pair with one of the scenarios.
To start with, one person will act as the coach and the other as the coachee and they will spend 10 minutes to role-play the scenario you have handed them.
The person playing the coachee should try their best to act out the emotions that would come with the scenario, i.e. they should try and act upset (within reason) and emotional.
The coach in the scenario has to try and be emotionally effective by showing empathy, understanding, and good listening skills.
After the 10 minutes, have the participants rotate coach and coachee roles and either play out the same scenario again or provide them with a new one.
As with many activities, it is worth having a class discussion at the end to talk about what they experienced and learned from this coaching skills activity.
11. Hot Seat Coaching
Time needed: 30 minutes (but 60 minutes if a large class).
Intention: This is another of these coaching training activities where participants can practice high-pressure situations/scenarios to get an idea of the pressure they might sometimes feel when providing coaching.
This activity involves team support and helps participants learn to think more creatively as a coach.
Participants: 4+ participants.
How to run this activity: Given the nature of this coaching exercise, it can be worth starting by explaining that everyone needs to be supportive and offer constructive ideas.
If you have more than 8 people, then divide people into smaller groups.
Then have one person (the person being coached in this activity) take a seat in the center of the/their group and the others will face this person.
The coachee will now explain a problem or issue they are having at the moment such as in work, i.e. their career future or skills they want to learn and the rest of the group will listen.
If the coachee cannot think of a scenario then you can provide them a pre-planned scenario on a handout as needed, given that the key to this is the practice rather than necessarily the ideas themselves.
The coaches in the group should approach this by asking the coachee open-ended questions to try and get as much information as possible, to try and then offer the best possible coaching.
Questions might include ones aimed at finding out the coachee’s intended final outcome, what they have already tried, and any barriers to achieving the goal/s.
If you choose to, you can make the scenarios more general, i.e. the example of someone going on vacation/holiday and planning for a large family etc, i.e. how to go about it if they’ve never been abroad before.
Once the coachee has spoken about their scenario to the group, the groups will then have 15 minutes to tackle the activity.
Each coach in the group must in turn give their suggestions and ideas for potential solutions.
At the end of 15 minutes, you might want to rotate the role of coachee with another from the group and they play out another scenario in the same manner.
12. Time-Travel Coaching
Time needed: 30 minutes.
Intention: The last of these coaching skills training activities is an exercise that involves forward thinking and looking beyond immediate issues and challenges. This helps participants appreciate the concept of visualization in coaching and the value of long-term goal setting.
Number of Participants: 4+ participants.
How to run this activity: This activity is a little different in that you will guide the participants through a visualization. Over the course of 10 minutes, ask them to close their eyes and imagine that they are stepping into a time machine that is taking them 5 years into the future.
Where would they like to be career-wise? What changes would they like to see in that time in their personal life? What else would they like to see happen?
Through the visualization, you can ask questions such as:
- Who are you working for and where?
- What advice, in 5 years time would you give to yourself now?
- What helped you achieve these goals in 5 years time?
You can find some good visualization scripts online if you get stuck.
Useful Resources on Coaching
Do not forget that you can also draw on these resources if you are interested in coaching skills:
Coaching Teaching Materials
If you enjoyed these coaching skills exercises and activities, you might also find the PowerPoint slides and teaching notes useful:
Paul is Co-Founder of Symonds Research and is a qualified researcher with a PhD in wayfinding. Paul helps the team at Symonds Research build and focus on providing high-quality training materials packages and programs for trainers, classroom teachers and HR departments.