For coaches
How to review your own coaching recordings
A disciplined practice for coaches: what to listen for in your recorded sessions, why self-review misleads, and how to make it honest.
Written for practising coaches, including those preparing for credential performance evaluations.
Most coaches do not listen to their own recordings, and most of those who do listen the wrong way: once through, wincing at their verbal tics, relieved when the client had insights, filed under done. That kind of listening confirms what you already believe about your coaching. It rarely changes anything.
Recordings are the only honest witness of your actual practice. Memory edits ruthlessly in your favour. If you record sessions, with proper consent, you hold better development data than any course can give you. The question is how to use it.
Listen for patterns, not moments
A single missed opportunity tells you little; everyone misses moments. What matters is what repeats. Across two or three sessions, track the same few questions: Who sets the direction after the opening agreement? What happens in the two seconds after the client says something emotionally loaded? How often does your question contain a suggestion wearing a question mark? Count, rather than impression: how much of the airtime is yours?
Separate what happened from what you meant
Self-review fails mostly through intention creep: you remember what you were trying to do and grade that instead of what you did. The transcript is the antidote. Read your questions stripped of your intentions. Would a stranger call that question curious, or directive? Did the client actually go somewhere new after it, or answer politely and return to their script?
Know what self-review cannot do
There is a structural limit. The patterns that most constrain your coaching are the ones you cannot hear, because the same habits of attention that produced them are doing the reviewing. You will reliably catch your tics and your talk ratio. You will not reliably catch the deeper pattern: the class of client statement you consistently step past, the flavour of discomfort you consistently rescue clients from. For that you need other ears: a mentor coach, a supervisor, or a rigorous external review of the recording.
This matters double if the recording is going somewhere consequential, such as a credential performance evaluation. Deciding whether a session is your strongest available evidence is precisely the judgement self-review is worst at, both directions: coaches submit recordings they should have held back, and hold back recordings stronger than they realise. If you are preparing a submission, work from the current requirements published by the credentialing body itself, and get qualified eyes on the recording before you commit it.
A practice that fits in a working month
- Record regularly, with explicit client consent, so no single recording carries performance pressure.
- Review one session per month deeply rather than every session shallowly.
- Pick one pattern per quarter to work on, and let the others wait.
- Once or twice a year, put a recording in front of someone qualified to see what you cannot.
Gary Malcolm is an ICF Master Certified Coach who leads a multinational business in Vietnam while coaching senior leaders and leadership teams across APAC, and develops executive coaches toward ICF accreditation. Views here are his professional opinion.