MOJOWAY
Free · no signup to read
For coaches

The first session question library.

Thirty-two questions, grouped by what they are actually for — plus the five that quietly cost you the room. Take them, use them, no attribution needed.

Jump to

1. Before they arrive 2. Opening 3. What actually matters 4. Where they are stuck 5. What success means 6. Closing 7. What not to ask

Why a library and not a script. A script assumes you know which question the person in front of you needs. You don't yet. So the useful thing is not the perfect question — it's knowing what each question is for, so you can pick in the moment.

01

Before they arrive

Send two or three of these in your confirmation message. The first session goes twice as fast when they have already started thinking.

  1. What made you look for a coach now, rather than six months ago? You are looking for the trigger, not the topic. The trigger tells you how much urgency is in the room.
  2. If our work goes well, what is different in your week? Forces a concrete answer. Vague goals produce vague sessions, and vague sessions produce a client who does not rebook.
  3. Have you worked with a coach before? How did that go? Someone who was let down before will test you. Knowing that in advance changes how you read their silence.
02

Opening the session

The first four minutes set whether they will tell you the real thing or the tidy version.

  1. What should I know about you that isn't on the form? Signals that the form was the minimum, not the point. It also gives permission to go off-script.
  2. How do you want to use this hour? Hands them the steering wheel early. People who feel steered resist; people who feel consulted engage.
  3. What would make this hour worth your time? A lower bar than "what are your goals", so it gets a truthful answer instead of a polished one.
  4. Anything you are hoping I won't ask about? Almost nobody says no. What they do instead — the pause, the laugh, the "no, nothing" — is the map.
  5. How direct do you want me to be? Some people want to be challenged in session one; some will leave. Ask, then honour the answer.
03

Finding what actually matters

The presenting problem is rarely the problem. These questions go one layer down without prying.

  1. What have you already tried? Saves you from proposing the thing that failed last year. Also shows respect for the effort they have made.
  2. If that problem vanished tomorrow, what would you notice first? Moves the conversation from the absence of a problem to the presence of a life.
  3. Who else is affected by this? Almost nothing is only about one person. This finds the real system, and the real stakes.
  4. What would you tell a friend in exactly this situation? People give better advice than they take. The gap between the two is often the whole session.
  5. What is the story you tell about why this keeps happening? Names the narrative without arguing with it. You cannot change a story nobody has said out loud.
  6. What part of this is actually working? Counterweight. A session that is only about deficits leaves people heavier than they arrived.
04

Where they are stuck

Stuck usually means a cost they have not named, not a skill they lack.

  1. What does staying where you are cost you? Change is expensive. Until the cost of not changing is spoken, motivation stays theoretical.
  2. What are you getting out of things staying as they are? There is always a payoff. Finding it is the difference between a plan and a relapse.
  3. What would you have to give up to get what you say you want? The most useful question in this list. Most stuckness is an unpriced trade, not a missing skill.
  4. When did you last do the thing you are avoiding? Finds a working example inside their own life, which beats any advice you could give.
  5. What are you afraid I will think of you? Use once, gently, and only once you have earned it. It is the fastest route to the real material.
05

What success means to them

You need a definition you both recognise, or you will be measuring different things for three months.

  1. How will we both know this is working? Agree it now, while nobody is defending a position. It becomes your agenda for every review.
  2. What is the smallest change that would still count? Gives you an early win to point at. Early evidence is what keeps people in the room.
  3. What would you want to be true in ninety days? Long enough to be meaningful, short enough to be real. Vague horizons never get reviewed.
  4. What have you achieved before that you are proud of? Reveals their own model of how they succeed, which is the model you should be borrowing.
06

Closing the session

The last five minutes decide whether there is a session two.

  1. What is the one thing from today you want to keep? If they cannot name one, the hour did not land, and you would rather know now.
  2. What is the first small thing you will do before we speak again? Small and specific beats big and noble. This is the only homework that gets done.
  3. What should we do differently next time? Invites feedback while it is cheap. Also tells you what they were too polite to say earlier.
  4. Was there anything you wanted to raise that we didn't get to? The last door. A meaningful share of the real agenda arrives in the final two minutes.
07

What not to ask

These are not bad questions. They are questions that are wrong in minute ten.

  1. "Why haven't you done that yet?" Reads as an accusation. It buys compliance and costs you the truth. Use "what has got in the way?" instead.
  2. "Have you tried…?" before they finish the story. Solutions offered too early teach the client that the useful part is over. Let them finish, then wait three seconds.
  3. Anything with two questions in one sentence. They will answer the easier one, usually the second. Split it.
  4. "How does that make you feel?" Not wrong, just worn out. It invites a label instead of a description. Ask what happened next, or what they noticed in their body.
  5. A question you already know the answer to. It is a test, not a question, and clients can tell. Ask it as a statement of curiosity, or not at all.

Take the client-facing version

The library above is yours to use however you like. If it is useful, the version I actually hand new clients is different: three questions, written in plain language, sent before session one — the ones that make someone arrive already thinking rather than waiting to be asked.

Put in an address and both open right here: the client-facing note you can copy, and a print-friendly sheet of the full library.

Both links open on this page immediately. I also send them once by email — one message, nothing after it.

Where this list comes from. It is the list I wrote for my own first sessions, then kept because clients responded differently to it. The questions here are the ones that produced an answer worth writing down — not the ones that sounded good.