A Wheel of Life is a simple yet powerful assessment tool that is used by coaches. It provides a very effective diagnostic of how their clients are balancing the different facets of their life.

As we will explain in this guide, A Wheel of Life can also be fashioned as a Wheel of Business, a Wheel of Leadership, a Wheel of Health, or anything else you think is relevant for your clients!

Table of Contents

In this Complete Guide to the Wheel of Life, we will cover the following topics:

1. What is a Wheel of Life?
2. What is Evalinator?
3. What are the categories in the Wheel of Life?
4. What to tell your clients as they use your Wheel of Life assessment?
5. What problems do coaches face with a paper Wheel of Life?
6. Benefits of going digital with a Wheel of Life assessment
7. Setting up your own digital Wheel of Life

What is a Wheel of Life?

A Wheel of Life is essentially a way to diagnose and balance the most important facets of life. Coaches know that sometimes a problem being faced may have its roots in a completely different place — somewhere you may not look, or may not even want to look. For example, workplace issues are sometimes related to what’s happening with one’s satisfaction in other walks of life such as social, family, or giving back to others.

By digging deeper into these different key facets using a Wheel of Life, you (and your coach) can identify and address the real reasons that are causing an imbalance. Then the coach can work with you to resolve those imbalances.

A Wheel of Life has multiple dimensions — generally 8–10 categories — that clients assess themselves on. The categories cover both personal and professional aspects of one’s life. At the end of the exercise an individual can clearly see the areas of prioritization, and can decide how to make a change supported by their coach.

Some of the many different applications of Wheel are:

• Life coaches address dimensions such as career, family, friendships, financial security etc.
• Business coaches could look at leadership, sales, marketing, people, customer service etc.
• Career coaches might examine culture fit, skills, growth, executive presence, storytelling, etc.

What is Evalinator?

Evalinator is a platform for coaches to create their very own digital and interactive Wheel of Life. You can place the Wheel on your website to act as a magnet and increase the number of visitors who engage with you. Clients and prospects take the assessment by providing their email addresses. Results are immediate and you can then follow up with them in a personalized way. The Wheel also has features for ongoing engagement during coaching sessions.

See a quick 1-minute explainer below.

What are the categories in the Wheel of Life?

The common categories used in Wheel of Life are as follows:

• Career
• Financial health
• Family
• Fun & leisure
• Friends
• Personal growth
• Giving
• Health
• Marriage
• Social circle
• Spirituality

In each of these categories the individual would rate their satisfaction or happiness on a scale of 1–10. At the end of the exercise, the Wheel of Life would show them where some of the imbalances could be. And if there are any interactions between two categories.

For example, if an individual feels they are struck in their career and are slowly falling behind they might rate themselves a 3. And if they are satisfied, then they might rate themselves a 10. A low rank in marriage (feeling of being loved and supported) may also appear together with a decrease in the rating on career or health. A coach can then help pinpoint if the two facets are independent, or related and then help clients set goals to get to where they need to be. The target state is up to the individual of course, and the goals can be both short and long term.

A Wheel of Life is a deceptively simple tool. If you put a little thought into it, and if you have a coach who asks probing questions to help you drop your guard, it is a fantastic way to take some focused action to improve your state of overall well-being.

What to tell your clients as they use your Wheel of Life assessment?

Assessing the balance using a Wheel of Life does need some preparation. Here are 2 tips to make sure that the assessments by clients are accurate.

Focus on happiness, not desire

Often when people rate themselves, they tend to think in terms of “how much” they have. Instead remind them that it’s about how satisfied they are. For example, they may not be the CEO of their company, but if they are happy with what they do and the time they spend, then that’s how they should rate themselves.

It is also tempting to rate for desire which can be a folly. It is human nature to want more. Instead, remind clients that while rating themselves for happiness, it’s important to rate as per their current happiness. And that you will help them solve for desire later. For example, if earning more means having to travel a lot, but they are happy not traveling then that’s how their current happiness is to be rated. The tradeoffs and sacrifices of more money is to be discussed as a goal and together with other aspects, not independently. Otherwise the assessment of balance in their lives will be skewed.

Rate each category independently

Often people derive co-relations that affects their ratings. Remind your clients to rate each facet independently in terms of satisfaction. Just because they are too busy at work to spend more time with family, doesn’t mean they rate their “career” facet as unhappy.

The actions to achieve balance will come later. Don’t let them jump to conclusions.

Some best practices when using a Wheel of Life

Ask probing questions

As a coach, the questions to ask are often the best help you can give. For example, you can ask if anything surprises them in their Wheel of Life, what a score of 10 looks like, why do they think a rating (high or low) is appropriate, which dimension is to be prioritized right now and why.

It is expected that the right questions may alter their current assessment of balance. That is perfectly fine. Its important that the baseline for coaching is well grounded in reality.

Set meaningful goals

Goals are what you brainstorm with your clients to get them to make a change. A meaningful goal is based on self-introspection and prioritization. It’s not just to increase their score but to increase their overall happiness and sense of control. A goal should also be easily measurable and achievable.

Examples of goals could be to begin taking the kids to the park every weekend, or begin to have dinner alone with their spouse once every week, or begin to dress more formally at their job, or open each work meeting with a confident “How’s everyone doing today”? These are not suggestions of course, just examples of what a measurable and achievable goal looks like.

You could consider these examples as activities towards achieving a goal. That’s fine too. Just keep your definitions consistent.

Check in periodically

For a coach, it is important to “be there”. And nothing says that better than following up periodically or even sending words of encouragement by email. A check-in should not feel like pressure, but it’s just meant to ask if your client is comfortable meeting their goals, if they would like to report something, and if you can help them in anyway. If you are using a digital wheel of life on Evalinator, this periodic check in very easy to do, as clients can report their progress, and you can guide them remotely without having to send emails and risk missing something.

What problems do coaches face with a Wheel of Life?

The Wheel of Life is an excellent tool. But it does present some challenges in today’s digital world. Let’s see what they are.

Most coaches would use a PDF template today. There are excellent templates available for download on the internet. So a coach provides a template to their client, and then they begin the discussion and exploration. This process definitely gets the job done.

Building relationships with prospective clients is tough

When coaches put a Wheel of Life template online for download in return for an email address, we call such a PDF a “lead magnet”. The coach now has the email address of a prospective client. They can follow up and set up a discovery call to see if they would be a right fit.

However, an email address captured like this does not provide any additional information or context to the coach. So the outreach would be very generic and not at all personalized. Even when using a lead magnet such as an eBook or a checklist, there is nothing to keep the prospective clients engaged with. The coaches have no way to keep in touch in a personalized way except send out periodic newsletters or emails that are not specific to the recipient.

By using static templates, it is difficult to build trust with prospects so they are ready to sign up when they are ready.

Continuous engagement and accountability is not feasible

A PDF template of a Wheel of Life also does not help with engagement outside of the office. People need goals and constant motivation. So coaches are always trying to follow up, but have no way of knowing what progress is being made until the next session. Engagement and retention suffers if the client does not see adequate progress. Coaches are always catching up.

Benefits of going digital with a Wheel of Life assessment

A digital Wheel of Life has several benefits. It allows you to:

• Set more discovery calls because clients see value even before they book the discovery call. They get a taste of your style as soon as they fill one out.
• It helps you to keep clients engaged after the discovery sessions because they agree to take action on agreed goals even if they are not paying you yet. In essence, you become their accountability anchor.
• You can also inspire them with the wisdom of the crowd. While, everyone’s situation and goals are different, a coach has better data available from their Wheel of Life. They can see aggregated data from across a wide cross-section of people who responded to the assessment. This implies that they can share quantifiable insights with their clients and prospects. Just seeing the many ways a problem can be tackled helps your clients with inspiration and motivation.

And you can personalize each interaction instead of bulk mailing your entire list the same thing.

It is well proven that when clients are ready to buy, they would rather buy from someone they already trust and have a comfortable relationship with.

That’s exactly how a Digital Wheel of Life helps. Rather than just a printed form, or a static online tool, you and your clients can actually use it as a tool that promotes introspection and accountability. And as you build context and engage in a manner that yields the desired benefits to your clients, they become more likely to stay engaged.

That brings us to better overall personalization. A digital wheel helps you personalize your outreach and check-ins so you always appear to be acting with full context. Based on the scores, you can either handcraft your personal messages, or use your marketing automation tool to generate tailored messages. The summary information from the Digital Wheel can go into the system that you are using. That way you are helpful and letting the clients take their own time to decide when they are ready.

Clients must be willing, receptive, and introspective. They should be ready to take action themselves. And if you add digital to your toolkit, you can supplement and reinforce your wonderful techniques.

Setting up your own digital Wheel of Life

Coaches can create a Digital Wheel of Life with Evalinator to use with clients. Once created, it can be used with all your clients. Only you and each individual client have access to the scores and the goals you help them set. In addition, you can adjust or change the categories as you like, and also adjust the colors of the Wheel to match your brand. You can embed it on your own website so that your clients have a seamless experience. For those coaches who offer a complimentary discovery session, the online Wheel of Life is a very effective way for prospective clients to start a relationship with you and build trust.

Next Steps

Whether you are using a paper wheel of life or a digital one, we hope these best practices help you help your clients.

Don’t consider a digital Wheel of Life as just a powerful lead magnet. It also helps you engage your clients and build a long lasting relationship. It becomes a goal setting and accountability tool.

You can customize it completely when you create your own Wheel of Life on Evalinator — the dimensions, your style, the colors other things. You can also host your Wheel of Life on your own website. And you can begin to capture email addresses in your own marketing database too.

Create a digital / online Wheel of Life today and start engaging your prospects and clients. It’s a great way to build trust and confidence.

Originally published at https://evalinator.com/blog on February 7, 2022.