Do you invite clients to check-in with you via email between sessions? Some coaches see that as too much unpaid work and don’t offer such invitations. Other see it as something easy and beneficial to do. I’m in the second camp.
I invite all of my clients to check in with me via email on a regular and even a daily basis, as an aid in helping them stick to their intentions and as a way for them to hold themselves accountable.
I tell them that they are free to write as much as they like and that, most often, I’ll reply with just a few words, like “Great!” or “Thanks for checking in,” unless their check-in email requires more from me than that. I end every first session with a new client with the invitation to think about checking in with me between sessions.
Whether or not you invite clients to check in with you is completely up to you. It isn’t any sort of “should.” If you have the strong feeling that you would find such check-ins burdensome, time-consuming, and/or annoying, you might well not make such an offer.
On the other hand, it might be good not to presume that you would find such check-ins burdensome or annoying and first give them a try. If they don’t work for you, you need not offer them to future clients. But it might be a lovely thing to try out a few times, just to see how it works and how it feels.
A complete check-in exchange might sound like the following.
Client: “I got to my writing today, but only for twenty minutes, not for the full thirty minutes.”
You: “Congrats on those twenty minutes !”
In a nutshell, your objectives are to witness your client’s efforts, cheerlead and celebrate, and, when and as appropriate, coach a little. The latter might sound like this:
Client: “I can’t tell whether it would be better to just supply the information or create little vignettes. Readers of nonfiction seem to like those little vignettes!”
Coach: “Well, you might try writing a few paragraphs in each style, to see which seems to work better. Might that be an approach?”
I am comfortable making suggestions of this sort. You may not feel comfortable employing such tactics, but you might nevertheless want to give it a try, just to see how it works for you and also because it might give you some useful practice in thoughtful suggesting.
In session, you must make suggestions on the fly, which can feel pushy and maybe makes you feel anxious. By practicing suggesting in your email responses to client check-ins, you hone your suggestion-offering skills. This might constitute another good reason to give check-ins a try.
Most clients will not want to check in with you daily or even very regularly. If I ask a client how often she would like to check in with me, she will most likely say, “Maybe weekly?” My response would then be, “Great! Let’s do that. What day of the week would you like that to be?” And, because it feels somehow natural and customary, she will likely say, “Maybe Friday?” And so, we are set!
Typically, I would also take this moment as an opportunity to summarize: “Okay, so for the next month you’ll be working on A, B, and C. And you’ll check in with me each Friday? Does that sound about right?”
This is a very brief look at what I think is a beautiful thing and a valuable tool in a coach’s arsenal, the client check-in. In my experience, some clients will indeed write a lot, and a very few will abuse the privilege and overdo their check-ins. But in general, clients are very mindful of your time and of the unspoken boundaries of this sort of interaction. You might want to take a risk and give this valuable between-session add-on a try.
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