By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

Life Coaching Intake Forms: What to Capture Before the First Session

A life coach who starts the first session by asking "So, what brings you here today?" has already wasted the most expensive minutes of the engagement. The client is paying for transformation, not for the coach to gather basic background information in real time. Discovery calls are for rapport and fit. Intake forms are for data. When those two get conflated, the coach spends the first paid session doing administrative work that should have been handled before the client ever sat down.

Most coaching practices collect a name, email, and maybe a paragraph about what the client hopes to achieve. That is not intake — that is a contact form. A real life coaching intake form captures the client's current life landscape, the goals that brought them to coaching, the boundaries of what coaching can and cannot address, and the logistical framework for how the engagement will operate. Here is what that form should include.

Client overview and goals: the reason they are here

Every coaching engagement starts with a catalyst. Something happened — a divorce filing, a layoff, a milestone birthday, a promotion that felt hollow, a conversation that shifted something — and the client decided that the gap between where they are and where they want to be is large enough to justify professional help. Your intake form needs to capture both the factual context and the emotional catalyst:

• Contact information and demographics — name, email, phone, age, occupation, relationship status, living situation. These are not just administrative fields. A 28-year-old single software engineer seeking purpose and a 52-year-old married executive navigating a career transition are fundamentally different coaching engagements, even if both check the "career" box.
• Primary life domains seeking improvement — career and professional growth, romantic and family relationships, physical health and wellness, life purpose and meaning, personal finances, creativity and self-expression, spirituality and inner life. Let clients select multiple domains but ask them to rank their top three. Coaching that tries to address everything addresses nothing.
• The triggering event — what specifically prompted them to seek coaching now, not six months ago or six months from now? This is the most important qualitative field on the intake form. The trigger reveals urgency, emotional state, and what the client will measure success against. "I got passed over for a promotion I deserved" tells you something different from "I realized I have been going through the motions for five years."
• Company or organization — if applicable. Corporate-sponsored coaching has different dynamics, reporting expectations, and confidentiality considerations than self-funded personal coaching. If the client's primary goal is business growth rather than personal development, a business coaching intake captures the operational and financial context that a life coaching form typically does not.

Values and vision: defining what success actually looks like

Coaching without a clear values foundation is just goal-setting with accountability, and the client can get that from an app. The intake form is where you begin mapping the client's internal compass so that the goals you set together are actually aligned with what matters to them — not what they think should matter:

• Core values identification — ask the client to select or rank their top five to seven values from a provided list (autonomy, security, creativity, connection, achievement, service, adventure, family, integrity, growth, freedom, health, recognition, faith). This is a starting point, not the final answer. Many clients discover during coaching that their stated values and their lived values are different. The intake captures where they start.
• Life vision — where do they want to be in one year, three years, and five years? These do not need to be precise. "Running my own consulting practice and living near the coast" is more useful than "making $250K" because it reveals what the client actually wants to feel, not just what they want to have.
• Personal definition of success — what does success look like to them specifically, in their own words? This question exposes whether the client is pursuing their own version of a good life or someone else's. The answer shapes every goal you set together.
• Prioritization — what is most important right now, and what can wait? Clients who say everything is equally urgent are telling you they have not yet done the triage work that coaching begins with. That is useful data.

Current life assessment: where they are starting from

You cannot coach someone toward a destination if you do not know where they are standing. The intake should capture a structured self-assessment across life domains — not because the client's self-rating is perfectly accurate, but because it gives you a baseline to work from and revisit as the engagement progresses:

• Life domain satisfaction — a wheel-of-life or similar framework where the client rates their satisfaction (1–10) across career, relationships, health, finances, fun and recreation, personal growth, physical environment, and family. The numbers themselves matter less than the gaps between the highest and lowest ratings. A client who rates career at 9 and relationships at 3 is living a lopsided life, and they usually know it.
• What is working well — strengths, resources, support systems, habits, and achievements already in place. Coaching is not therapy. You are not excavating dysfunction — you are building on existing foundations. Knowing what the client already does well tells you what to leverage.
• What is not working — frustrations, obstacles, recurring patterns, stuck points. Ask for specifics. "My relationships are not great" is not actionable. "I keep choosing partners who need rescuing and then resent them for it" is a pattern a coach can work with.
• Biggest challenge right now — one thing. Force the prioritization. Clients who list twelve challenges are avoiding the one that actually matters.
• Biggest strength right now — one thing. This becomes a resource you return to when the coaching gets difficult.

Coaching history and expectations: what they know and what they assume

Clients arrive with vastly different expectations of what coaching is, and those expectations are shaped by whatever they have experienced before — which may have been excellent coaching, mediocre coaching, therapy they are calling coaching, or a Tony Robbins event they attended once. Your intake needs to surface these assumptions before they collide with your actual process:

• Prior coaching experience — have they worked with a coach before? Who? For how long? What worked? What did not? A client who says "my last coach just listened and never challenged me" is telling you they want a more direct style. A client who says "my last coach was too pushy" is telling you the opposite. Both are giving you a map of what to do and what to avoid.
• Therapy history — this is not a clinical question. It is a scope-of-practice question. A client currently in therapy for depression is someone whose coaching engagement needs to complement, not replace, their clinical work. A client who has never been in therapy but describes symptoms that suggest clinical need is someone you may need to refer out before coaching can begin.
• Understanding of coaching — what does the client believe coaching is and is not? If they expect you to give them advice, tell them what to do, or fix their problems, the intake is where you correct that expectation. Coaching is a partnership, not a prescription.
• Preferred coaching style — direct and challenging, collaborative and exploratory, structured with assignments, or flexible and intuitive. Let the client tell you how they learn and grow best. Some people need someone to hold up a mirror. Others need someone to hand them a roadmap.
• Accountability preferences — how do they want to be held accountable? Check-in texts between sessions? A shared action tracker? Hard deadlines? Or do they prefer to self-report at the start of each session? Accountability that does not match the client's style becomes either nagging or invisible.

Scope-of-practice screening: the line between coaching and therapy

This is the section that separates a professional intake form from a casual questionnaire, and it is non-negotiable for any coach who takes their practice seriously. Life coaching is not therapy. Life coaching is not counseling. Life coaching is not a clinical intervention. And clients who need clinical support should be receiving it from a licensed clinician, not from a coach — no matter how skilled.

Your intake form must screen for conditions that fall outside the coaching scope of practice:

• Active suicidal ideation or self-harm — if a client indicates current suicidal thoughts, the appropriate response is an immediate referral to a crisis resource (988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline), not a coaching session. Your intake form should include a direct screening question and a clear protocol for what happens if the answer is yes.
• Active substance dependence — a client in active addiction needs treatment, not coaching. A client in stable recovery may be appropriate for coaching, but the intake should capture the distinction.
• Untreated mental illness — unmanaged depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or other clinical conditions. Coaching can complement clinical treatment. It cannot replace it.
• Domestic violence or active abuse — clients in unsafe living situations need safety planning and professional intervention from domestic violence advocates, not a conversation about life goals.
• Active trauma — a client processing a recent traumatic event (assault, sudden loss, serious accident) needs trauma-informed clinical care before they are ready for forward-looking coaching work.

Include a section on your intake that lists the referral resources you have available — therapists, counselors, crisis hotlines, substance abuse programs. And include a clear informed consent statement about the distinction between coaching and therapy. The client should sign an acknowledgment that they understand coaching is not a substitute for mental health treatment.

This scope-of-practice boundary is unique to coaching. Health coaches navigate a parallel boundary — they screen for medical conditions that require physician oversight rather than clinical mental health conditions. Personal trainers face a similar dynamic with physical contraindications and liability screening. In each case, the intake form is the first and most important filter.

Readiness and commitment: are they actually prepared to do the work

Coaching only works when the client is willing to do the work between sessions. A beautifully designed twelve-week coaching program is worthless if the client treats sessions as passive conversations and does not follow through on commitments. Your intake should assess readiness honestly:

• Time commitment — how many hours per week can the client realistically dedicate to coaching work outside of sessions? This includes reflection exercises, journaling, action items, reading, and practice. A client who says "I do not have any free time" is telling you something important about both their current life and their readiness for change.
• Financial commitment acknowledgment — coaching is an investment. The client should confirm they understand the fee structure, the payment schedule, and that they are making this investment voluntarily and without financial strain that would become a source of resentment or pressure.
• Willingness to be uncomfortable — growth requires discomfort. Ask the client directly: are they willing to be challenged? To sit with difficult emotions? To do things differently even when the old way feels safer? A client who wants transformation but is not willing to be uncomfortable is not yet ready for coaching.
• Potential saboteurs — people, habits, beliefs, or environments that might undermine progress. A client whose spouse dismisses coaching as a waste of money. A client whose social circle reinforces the patterns they are trying to change. A client whose own inner critic will argue against every new behavior. Naming these at intake does not neutralize them, but it makes them visible — and visible obstacles are easier to navigate than invisible ones.

Communication, logistics, and session structure

The operational framework of a coaching engagement matters more than most coaches realize. A client who prefers text check-ins but gets email follow-ups will disengage. A client who needs evening sessions but gets offered 10 AM slots will cancel. Capture the logistics at intake so the structure supports the work:

• Session format — phone, video, or in-person. Some clients think better when they are walking and talking by phone. Others need the face-to-face connection of video. Others want the presence of an in-person meeting. Let the client state their preference.
• Session frequency and duration — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Forty-five minutes, sixty minutes, or ninety minutes. Weekly sessions build momentum. Bi-weekly gives more time for implementation between sessions. Monthly is usually too infrequent for active coaching but works for maintenance phases.
• Between-session communication — email, text, voice memo, a coaching app, or none. Define what is included in the coaching fee and what constitutes additional support. A client who sends three lengthy emails between every session is consuming time that should be accounted for.
• Time zone — if working remotely, capture the client's time zone and whether it changes seasonally (travel, dual residency).
• Scheduling preferences and cancellation policy — preferred days and times, minimum notice for cancellation or rescheduling, and the fee policy for late cancellations or no-shows. These are business terms, and they belong in the intake, not in a surprise invoice after a missed session.

Program structure and agreements

Coaching is not an open-ended conversation that continues until someone gets tired of it. The most effective coaching engagements have a defined structure, and the intake is where that structure gets established:

• Package type — single session (assessment or clarity call), monthly rolling, three-month intensive, six-month program, or twelve-month transformation. Each has different goals, pacing, and expectations. A three-month engagement is about solving a specific problem. A twelve-month engagement is about sustainable change across multiple life domains.
• Payment terms — payment in full, monthly installments, or per-session. Include the refund policy and what happens if the client wants to end the engagement early.
• Intake session vs. discovery call — clarify the distinction. The discovery call is a free or low-cost conversation to determine mutual fit. The intake session is the first paid session where the coaching work begins. Your intake form bridges the two — the client fills it out after the discovery call and before the intake session so you arrive at the first paid session ready to coach, not ready to collect information.
• Confidentiality agreement — everything discussed in coaching is confidential, with specific exceptions (imminent harm to self or others, court order, mandatory reporting obligations if applicable). The client should acknowledge this in writing at intake.

Assessments: tools that deepen the intake

Many coaches use formal or informal assessment tools as part of their intake process. Your intake form should either include these assessments directly or indicate which ones the client should complete before the first session:

• Values card sort — a structured exercise where the client sorts value words into categories (very important, somewhat important, not important) to surface their core values. More reliable than asking someone to list their values from memory.
• Wheel of life — the standard life-satisfaction assessment across eight to twelve domains. Simple, visual, and immediately useful for identifying where the coaching should focus.
• Strengths inventory — a self-assessment of personal strengths, or a formal tool like CliftonStrengths or VIA Character Strengths. Coaching builds on strengths, so knowing them early accelerates the work.
• Personality or behavioral assessments — Kolbe, DISC, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or others if you use them in your practice. These are not required, but coaches who use them find they accelerate understanding of how the client processes information, makes decisions, and relates to others.
• Custom intake questionnaire — open-ended questions specific to your coaching methodology. "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" or "What are you tolerating in your life right now?" or "What is the conversation you have been avoiding?" These questions prime the client for coaching-level self-reflection before the first session begins.

Building the coaching relationship from the first form

A thorough intake form does more than collect data. It begins the coaching process itself. When a prospective client fills out a form that asks about their values, their vision, their readiness to be uncomfortable, and their understanding of what coaching is and is not, they are already doing the reflective work that coaching demands. They arrive at the first session having thought about questions most people never ask themselves — and that gives you a running start.

The intake also protects both parties. The scope-of-practice screening protects clients who need clinical support from receiving coaching instead. The confidentiality agreement protects the trust that makes coaching possible. The commitment assessment protects the coach from investing in a client who is not yet ready to invest in themselves. Every section of the form serves the relationship, not just the filing cabinet.

If you are building documentation across a coaching or wellness practice, the Professional Services Bundle includes life coaching alongside 34 other professional service categories, each with practice-specific intake fields.