How to Use a Five Energies Card in a First Coaching Session

Most coaches make the same mistake with an assessment: they read it aloud. The client sits still, nods at the accurate bits, and leaves with a vocabulary they will not use again. The card did its job, but the session did not.

A first session has one job, which is to find the place where the client is willing to work. The card is a way to get there faster, not a presentation. This is a structure for using it that keeps the client talking more than you do, and ends with something both of you can check next week.

What the card is for, and what it is not

The five energies describe a starting shape: where a person tends to put attention, how they pace themselves, and what they reach for when a room gets tense. It is a description of tendencies, not a diagnosis and not a ranking. Say that out loud in the first two minutes. Clients who have been through a workplace personality session are often braced for being put in a box, and a single plain sentence about what the card does not do removes most of that tension.

It also helps to be honest about the input. Birth date is required; body-composition numbers are optional and only sharpen part of the read. A client who knows this will trust the parts that land and will argue with the parts that do not, which is exactly the conversation you want. If you present the card as authoritative, disagreement becomes awkward and goes underground.

The first ten minutes: let the client speak first

Before you show anything, ask what brought them here and what a good outcome would look like in their own words. Then ask what they have already tried. Write down their exact phrasing. This matters because you will later want to connect a line on the card to something they said themselves, and you cannot do that if your own explanation filled the opening ten minutes.

Only then put the card on the table, and do it without a preamble. A useful opening line is: here is the shape it gives, tell me which part is wrong. Asking for the error first is counterintuitive, but it changes the client from a recipient into an editor. People are far more specific when they correct something than when they confirm it, and specificity is what you need to plan any real work.

Reading one number at a time

Do not walk through all five in order. Pick the one that touches the thing they named at the start, read the short version, and stop. Silence here is productive. If the client picks it up and starts talking, let them finish; do not add the second number to fill a pause. One energy, held long enough, will usually produce the example you were going to fish for anyway.

When a number does not land, do not defend it. Ask what they would have expected instead and why. That question often reveals the standard they are measuring themselves against, which is more useful than the number. The card is a prompt, and a prompt that produces a good story has done its work even if the client rejects the prompt.

Where the session should end

Reserve the last ten minutes for one concrete experiment rather than a summary of the card. Not a goal with a number attached, and not a habit to build for a month. One situation, already in their calendar, where they can try a slightly different move. Ask them to describe the situation out loud, including who else will be in the room, because vague intentions rarely survive the first busy Tuesday.

Write the experiment in their words, not yours. If it sounds like coaching language, it is probably yours. A good test is whether they can explain it to a friend without mentioning the framework at all. If they can, the card has done its job and can stay in the folder next week.

What to write down after they leave

Record three things: the phrasing they used for the problem, the line on the card they argued with, and the experiment they chose. Do not record a full interpretation. Notes that read like an analysis tend to anchor the next session to your reading rather than to what actually happened, and the client will feel the pull to perform consistency with it.

At the next meeting, start with the experiment, not the card. What happened is the data. If nothing happened, that is data too, and usually more interesting. The framework stays useful precisely because it is secondary; the moment it becomes the main subject, you are teaching a system instead of coaching a person.

MOJOWAY is a personal reflection tool, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. Read our Disclaimer.