Thoughtfully crafted session notes are a gift you can give to us clients, even if they’re only a few sentences. It doesn’t take much to train us to eagerly anticipate them. You can add even more power and active engagement to the mix by making us earn them.
How? By encouraging… nay, scratch that: requiring us to take a beat to do our own work to recap what WE thought mattered most. A few questions about what we took away and what our outlook is going forward, taking 5 minutes or less1And that’s enough, so let ‘em know: just five minutes, it doesn’t take any more., suffices.
A coach I worked with would always and only share his session notes contingent upon the work I’d done in my own post-appointment worksheet. This worked and was powerful because it was a sort of “yes/and” game of building upon insights. One week I just forgot to do that reflection work, and next week I discovered as much along with the lack of notes from that session. Because I look forward to and enjoy reading what my coach has to say about our sessions, I was genuinely bummed!
But that little sting was useful: it served as a potent reminder the importance of showing up to the process in order to get what I want.
So make your clients a little deal: they’ve got to show up and do their part to synthesize after your sessions, and for doing so, you’ll share with them what you came up with. Probably don’t say “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. Or do, with a chuckle; have fun with it. Because yeah, it’s kinda like that.
One, you tell CoachAccountable to always (and automatically) send a little post-appointment Worksheet assignment to your clients, e.g. 10 or 30 minutes after the session end time. This comes as an email which puts them 1 click away from typing up answers to whatever questions you’ve crafted (or accounts come with a nicely thought out template that you can use as is).
Once they do that work and mark it complete, you’ll get an email notification containing their answers.
From there, you can easily hop in to their client page within your account, and either type up Session Notes of your own, or give a final glance to those you’d already composed. Either way, once they’re ready, a few clicks is all it takes to send ’em off to your client; a well earned reward that is generally a treat to read.
Notes:
- 1And that’s enough, so let ‘em know: just five minutes, it doesn’t take any more.
