Coaching Tools 101 – The Wheel of Life – 11 New and Improved Uses for the Ultimate Coaching Tool

The Wheel of Life may be an “old hat” for coaches, but it is a powerful visual training tool with many uses in the world of training. In fact, it can be the best and most flexible coaching tool in any coach’s toolbox.

We forget that The Wheel of Life is still new to most of our clients. And even when you’ve encountered it before, it will tell you something new when you use it again, because like most coaching tools, they can only capture how someone is feeling at any one time.

So apart from the common use of the wheel to see balance of life, how else can we use The Wheel of Life to help our clients? Here are 11 new and improved uses for The Wheel of Life:

1. Use The Wheel of Life to Help Your Clients Set Meaningful Goals. Low scoring areas are ideal candidates for your clients to set bigger goals.
   Tip: This is an especially useful tool for business and career / executive coaches to steer left-brain clients into “softer” areas that improve throughout their lives. Which, of course, will benefit their careers and businesses in the long run.
2. Use a wheel to dig deeper and help your clients understand their lives and problems in greater depth. Take one of the segments or categories and ask them to dig deeper by writing 8 areas that make up that segment for them.
   Tip: E.g. A ‘Finance’ wheel could include saving for a home or wedding, spending less / budgeting, saving for retirement, paying off credit cards, getting a better paying job, etc.
3. Help your clients see how far they have come. Use The Wheel of Life monthly or quarterly with your clients, as a checkpoint to see how they are doing AND as a way for them to see how they have improved and grown. Improved scores demonstrate the concrete value of coaching and help clients see their learning and progression.
   Tip: It’s a bit like looking back at an old journal and seeing how far you’ve come!
4. Take the stress out of your customers! What about The Wheel of Stress from The Wheel of Frustration? Eliminate the usual categories of “life balance” and help your client to “think freely” about their problems. Ask them to label the top 8 areas that stress or frustrate them the most. Ask them to rate HOW stressful and frustrating each of their 10 areas is, and review the results with them.
   Tip: Ask, which area stresses them the most? Are there any surprises? How could they lower their scores?
5. Help your clients get excited about life! How about The Wheel of Happiness, Fun, or Even Excitement? Depending on what your client needs / is looking for, ask your client to come up with 8 areas or things that are fun or that excite him or make him happy. Label the wheel segments accordingly and ask your customer for an action or commitment for each segment. What do you notice? How could you bring more of each segment into your life?
   Tip: Help them find multiple wins, that is. areas where an action raises your score in several areas?
6. For business coaches, use the wheel to identify sales and / or marketing actions for your clients. Take a blank wheel and add the key areas where your customers need to act. Ask your clients to propose actions for each to complete in the next month.
   Tip: For example, a marketing roundtable could include the following; online social networks, SEO, article marketing, traditional networking, newsletter, fairs, advertising, seminars.
7. Priority management. What are your client’s top priorities? This could be at work, home, or life in general. Ask your customer to label each segment and specifically identify their top 3 priorities. Then ask them to rate their satisfaction out of 10 for each area.
   Tip: What do you notice? Are your priorities ‘clear’ or do you need to change your focus? What actions could you take to improve your scores?
8. Understand what is REALLY important in life. Have your client make a list or brainstorm their priorities or goals; Asking her to list everything she wants to “be, do, and have” in life is a great way to do it. Now ask them to take each priority or goal and go through the ‘balance’ categories on the Wheel of Life and ask, “Will achieving this improve my satisfaction in this area?” and for each area that is improved, that goal gets a point. Then check which goals get the highest and lowest scores. What do you notice? What have they learned? This helps people see what will really make a difference in their lives as opposed to what they think will improve their lives.
   Tip: Suppose your customer wants to buy a Ferrari. Will it improve your finances? No. Will it improve your relationships with family and friends? Probably not. Will it improve your career? Unlikely. Will it improve your fun? Yes. And so on until you get a score of maybe 2 out of a possible 8. Now consider being a great dad. It may not improve your finances or your career (although you never know), but it will help your family relationships, fun, health, personal growth, etc., which is why you might score 6 out of 8.
9. Identify skill gaps for promotions / new jobs / careers. Use a blank wheel and have your client (or you can do it beforehand) label the top 8 skills they will need to get the job or promotion they want. Now have them write down, out of 10, where they are at the moment against each of the abilities. Finally, assign an action against each of the skill areas in which they need to improve their skills.
   Tip: You could even ask them to identify an action for the areas in which they score high, “What could you do to really excel in that skill?”
10. Help your clients identify what they are looking for in a relationship. This is called The Wheel of Relationships. So, take a blank wheel and ask your customer to label the segments with the 8 qualities that an ideal partner would have. This MUST be done by the customer! And then ask them to rate how IMPORTANT out of 10 each quality is. This will help them identify whether being attractive or romantic is as important as being trustworthy, having a good sense of humor, or being a good parent.
    Tip: You can even use the strategy outlined in number 8 above, in which you take each personal quality they have listed and give it a point for each area of ​​the Wheel of Life that you improve. What qualities will really make a difference in your lives?
11. General action planning. Just use a blank wheel to help your customer take action. Write the goal at the top of the page and then ask them to write down the 8 actions or parts of the job that make up their goal.
    Tip: Have them put a date on each one, and they can use the pie slices to record the% complete for each area until it is complete!

Of course, it is not limited to 8 segments, it is just a useful number, and it is easy to divide the wheel into one! So feel free to use fewer segments or split segments for more.

And whatever we’ve used the wheel for, I like to ask this question when it’s complete: “So if this wheel represented your life / relationship / career / marketing strategy, is it a bumpy ride?”

I hope this has given you some new ideas on how you can work on and use ‘The Wheel of Life’ in your coaching practice. Give it a try, it’s very good!