We generally pay more attention to some aspects of our life than others. If you have clients who are satisfied with their careers but less so with their family life, you’ll know exactly how it works.
In this article, we’ll show you a quick and easy way to find out what life domains your clients might want to pay more attention to using Quenza’s handy, customizable Wheel of Life template. Let’s get started!
What Is The Wheel Of Life?
The Wheel of Life is a coaching assessment that explores your client’s satisfaction with different life domains.
Using a self-rating scale to measure how they feel about areas such as Money & Finances, Spirituality, and Family & Friends, clients completing the assessment can gain insight into any neglected areas they might want to pay more attention to, as well as an overview of any gaps between their current and ideal lives.
This Wheel of Life generally includes between eight to ten segments that represent different life domains; common examples include:
- Money
- Career
- Health
- Recreation
- Environment
- Community
- Family
- Friends
- Partner
- Learning
With the 360-degree overview this tool provides, clients can consider what actions they would like to take to restore balance and take steps to address the less attended-to areas.
The Wheel of Life is a great tool to use at the start of coaching programs or in initial discovery sessions to establish what you and your client would like to focus on.
The Wheel of Life provides a 360-degree overview of your clients satisfaction with different life domains, which can help them consider what actions they would like to take to address their neglected domains.
Template To Design Your Own Wheel of Life (+ PDF)
So how can you use this tool in your coaching sessions?
With Quenza, you can personalize and share a ready-made Wheel of Life Expansion or choose to create your own.
1. Wheel of Life Expansion
Quenza’s Wheel of Life Expansion is a pre-made template that includes the ten life domains listed above.
If you’re looking for a fast and easy way to share this tool with clients, you can select the template from your Expansion library with your $1, 30-day Quenza trial.
Add it to your library, share it with clients, and Quenza will automatically notify you when your coachee has completed their assessment.
Here’s an example of a completed Wheel of Life, showing the gaps between a client’s perceived “balance” and reality:
This template includes questions that help your clients to consider their three most neglected domains in greater depth:
- Why does this domain need attention?
- What can you do to raise your satisfaction in this domain?
2. Create Your Own Wheel of Life
Want to build your own Wheel of Life? It’s easy with the Quenza coaching app!
The first step is to define the life domains that are relevant to your client, ideally in collaboration with them.
Quenza’s Activity Builder then makes it easy for you to create a customized assessment from these domains using the Wheel of Life tool as shown below:
Drag and drop the Wheel icon into a blank Activity to start designing your tool:
Quenza’s Wheel of Life tool is completely customizable, so you can personalize it to suit each client or different life coaching session plans.
Simply follow these steps:
- Title your Activity
- Enter a description of the tool that will help your client understand the coaching assessment. As well as providing some instructions for rating each domain, it’s a good idea to include some background information that will help clients understand each category.
- Assign score labels (e.g., 1 = Minimum, 10 = Maximum), and
- Enter unique domains as dimensions (e.g., family, money, career).
Looking for a walkthrough? The video below covers everything you need to know about creating your own Wheel of Life using Quenza’s coaching platform:
3 Online Coaching Assessment Ideas
When the Wheel of Life is used as an initial assessment, a client’s results can be very useful in goal-setting. When it is completed on a regular basis between sessions, it can also be a helpful way to gauge their progress toward their goals.
The following three online coaching assessments can be used alongside the tool in your coaching programs or packages; all of them are available as customizable templates in Quenza’s Expansion library.
1. Implementation Intentions
Implementation Intentions is an exercise that can help your clients bridge the “gap” between their intentions and actions once they have set their coaching goals.
This activity introduces your clients to the “If-Then” technique when challenges arise, and motivation alone is not enough to help them stay on track.
2. Seeing Through The Illusion of Need Projection
Our goals are often projections of our own needs – we may strive for certain goals, believing that achieving them will result in satisfaction, happiness, or the reduction of a negative emotional state.
However, unmet needs frequently follow us even after we achieve the goals that we believe symbolize those needs.
Seeing Through The Illusion of Need Projection is a coaching tool that aims to help clients perceive their future goals as symbols of their projected needs. Using this exercise, you can help them explore how they can start meeting their unmet personal needs rather than turning them into future goals.
3. Exploring The Benefits of Change
If you are working with a client that is ambivalent about change, this exercise uses Motivational Interviewing techniques to help them evaluate the benefits of taking action.
It includes a series of questions that help them analyze the pros of changing their behavior, for example:
- What would you like to change in your life?
- Imagine you are 1 month into the future: what would it be like to have this improved situation?
- Would other people in your life also benefit from you making this change? If so, how?
Customizing The Exercise For Clients
The Wheel of Life isn’t the only tool that you can create using Quenza’s life coaching app – this versatile framework can be used to build a range of discovery assessments.
The following is a list of coaching exercises that might work for you and your clients:
- Wheel of Needs: This is a useful way to help clients evaluate how fulfilled they are with regard to ten essential psychological needs, such as Autonomy, Empathy, Honesty, Challenge, and Rest. This is a useful assessment for coachees who are struggling with negative emotional states and would like to explore how they might better satisfy their unmet needs.
- Wheel of Strengths: This is a helpful tool for giving clients an overview of the strengths they use most often, as well as those they use less frequently. A few example strengths from the VIA Character Strengths inventory include Curiosity, Gratitude, Fairness, Judgment, and Humor.
- Wheel of Values: Clients can use this tool to assess how satisfied with different domains of their life. Examples include Creativity, Integrity, Learning, and Freedom, as shown below.
5 Ways To Use The Wheel of Life In Quenza App
From a practical standpoint, the best way to use the Wheel of Life with your clients will depend on their goals and reasons for coaching.
With Quenza, it’s easy to use this Activity in a range of ways – here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Share your tool as a standalone coaching worksheet (e.g., as between-session homework)
- Schedule it as a step within a larger coaching program, for example, with your coaching forms and coaching contracts
- Provide your clients with a PDF copy of their results
- Share the Wheel of Life with groups, couples, or teams
- Scale up by creating a life coaching package with all your coaching assessments
Example Worksheet Ideas
If you’re creating a coaching program that includes the Wheel of Life, here are a few more relevant worksheets that could work well in your client’s journey.
- Personal Needs Meditation: This worksheet can help your clients check in with what they need when they are facing a difficult life situation. Using this exercise, they can consider potential actions they might try next to satisfy that psychological need in everyday life.
- Your Last Day On Earth: A worksheet that invites your clients to explore their core values and translate them into action by imagining their last day on Earth.
- Brief Needs Check-In: Many people fail to recognize what they need throughout the day. This worksheet outlines three steps that clients can take to build a habit of checking in regularly with their needs.
Final Thoughts
The Wheel of Life is a powerfully visual assessment that works brilliantly at a range of stages throughout coaching programs.
Now that you know how to create your own using Quenza’s tools, we’d love to hear how you use it with your clients. Are you ready to customize the tool for your sessions? Try Quenza for $1 today!
Frequently Asked Questions
You can put the different areas of life that are important to your clients in the Wheel of Life. This may include career or work, health and fitness, family and relationships, personal development and growth, finances, spirituality, social life and community involvement, and hobbies and interests.
The Wheel of Life is a tool used for personal development and goal-setting. It helps individuals evaluate different areas of their life and identify areas that need improvement. By rating your clients’ level of satisfaction with each area and connecting the dots, you can create a visual representation of their Wheel of Life that shows them where they are currently and where they want to be.
Yes, the wheel of life template can be adapted for use in group coaching and online therapy sessions. It can be a useful tool for group discussions and goal setting, allowing individuals to share their perspectives and insights on various aspects of life and learn from one another.
