30 weekly check-in questions that coaching groups actually answer

Ask three questions, not ten. Use a closed rating, a closed retrospective, and one short forward commitment. The thirty questions below are the ones we see hit 90% response rates inside Bitir groups, sorted by the purpose they serve.

Why three questions, not ten?

Member willingness to answer a weekly check-in is a budget, not an attitude. Most members will spend about ninety seconds on a check-in before they tab away. The 2023 ICF Global Coaching Study found that ongoing client engagement is the single biggest predictor of coaching outcomes, and engagement is something the coach has to design for, not hope for. A long check-in is the most common reason a group's response rate collapses in week four.

Three questions is the working maximum for a programme running longer than a month. Two is fine for the first month while members build the habit. The wrong move is starting at seven and trying to "trim" later. Members budget their attention based on the longest version of the check-in they have ever seen from you, so the first one sets the ceiling.

One coaching organisation we know — a 38-member Bristol parenting cohort — opened week one with an eight-question Google Form. Week-one response was 71%. Week-three response was 32%. They moved to a three-question Bitir poll in week four and were back above 90% by week six, but they had to apologise for the change.

What is the right structure for the three questions?

The three slots, in order, are:

1. One closed rating. Mood, energy, confidence on the week's goal, or sleep. A number on a 1–10 scale or a three-point Low/Medium/High. Answerable in three seconds.
2. One closed retrospective. Did you finish, did you train, did you submit, did you attend, did you practise. Yes/No or a number. Answerable in five seconds.
3. One short forward commitment. One sentence, free text, what specifically will you do this week. Answerable in thirty seconds.

We would argue the closed-then-open shape beats the open-then-closed shape across every cohort we have studied, because the easy two questions get the member through the friction of opening the check-in. By the time they reach the free-text box, they are already committed. Lead with the open question and a third of members will start, stall, and not come back.

What are the 30 questions, sorted by purpose?

Pick one from each row. Do not mix and match mid-programme. The rows are organised so the leftmost column is the most universal and the rightmost is the most domain-specific.

Closed rating questions (pick one)

1. How has your mood been this week? (1–10)
2. How is your energy right now? (Low / Medium / High)
3. How confident do you feel about this week's goal? (1–10)
4. How are you sleeping? (1–10, average over the last seven nights)
5. How do you feel about the programme so far? (1–10)
6. On a 1–10, how present have you felt this week?
7. On a 1–10, how connected to the group do you feel this week?
8. How stressful was this week compared with last? (Less / About the same / More)
9. How motivated do you feel for the week ahead? (1–10)
10. If today were a weather report, what would it be? (Sunny / Cloudy / Stormy / Foggy)

Closed retrospective questions (pick one)

11. Did you finish last week's commitment? (Yes / Partly / No)
12. How many sessions / practice blocks did you complete this week? (Number)
13. Did you submit your homework on time? (Yes / No)
14. How many days did you keep your habit this week? (0–7)
15. Did you attend the live session? (Yes / Watched the recording / Missed it)
16. How many of the suggested readings did you finish? (Number)
17. Did you have your planned 1:1 this week? (Yes / No / Not scheduled)
18. How many minutes of practice did you log? (Number)
19. Did you complete the assignment review? (Yes / Partly / No)
20. How many times did you do the breathing exercise this week? (Number)

Forward-commitment questions (pick one)

21. What is one specific thing you will do this week? (One sentence.)
22. What is the one piece of your week you most want to protect? (One sentence.)
23. Where do you most need help from the group this week? (One sentence.)
24. What is the smallest action that would make you proud by Friday? (One sentence.)
25. What is the one decision you want to make before next Monday? (One sentence.)
26. What is the practice block you are most likely to skip, and how will you protect it? (One sentence.)
27. What is one thing you learned this week that you want to keep using? (One sentence.)
28. What is the one conversation you have been avoiding? (One sentence.)
29. Where would you most value coaching this week? (One sentence.)
30. If you could only do one thing this week and the rest fell off the list, what would it be? (One sentence.)

How do you word a question so members actually answer it?

Three wording rules, in order of importance.

First, use concrete, observable verbs. "What did you finish this week?" beats "How did you progress?". "How many practice sessions did you complete?" beats "How committed do you feel?". Vague questions get vague answers, and after three weeks of vague answers the coach has nothing to coach from.

Second, give the answer a shape. The member should not have to invent the answer's structure. "One sentence" or "a number" or "yes/no/partly" are shapes. "Tell us about your week" is not a shape and members will either write a paragraph (and stop doing it by week four) or write nothing.

Third, keep the question answerable from memory in under fifteen seconds. If the member needs to open another app, scroll their calendar, or check a tracker, the check-in will be done in the queue at Pret on Wednesday lunchtime and you will lose the half who never opened it. The whole point is that it fits where the member already is.

How should the answers be visible?

Default to private. Member answers go to the coach only. The coach posts one aggregate note for the group within 24 hours, without naming individuals: "Mood across the group was a 6.4 this week, down a bit from last; the commitment most of us shared was finishing a draft. Here is one thing I noticed."

The temptation to make answers public — "we are a transparent community, we should see each other's check-ins" — is exactly the trap. Public-by-default check-ins train members to give the answer they think the group wants, which produces data the coach cannot trust and which quietly closes the door on the disclosures that actually matter. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy's group work guidance makes the same point about disclosure norms in any group setting.

Inside Bitir, member posts are private to the manager by default, which is the design choice that lets a check-in stay honest. If you want the group to see selected responses, the right pattern is to ask the member, after the fact, whether they would be happy to share theirs — not to flip the default.

What does this look like in a real cohort?

Take a hypothetical worked example: Amina Carter runs a 14-person parenting cohort in Leeds — "Settled Mornings" — an eight-week programme for parents of primary-school-age children with school-refusal anxiety. Her check-in, fired by recurring poll at 21:00 every Sunday and closed at 21:00 every Tuesday, is three questions: confidence on a 1–10, days the morning routine held this week (0–7), and one sentence on the morning she wants to protect next week. Members answer in private, Amina posts one aggregate note on Wednesday morning, and her check-in response rate sits at 96% across the eight-week cohort.

The forward-commitment question is the one Amina says earns its slot. "Half my coaching is replying to that one sentence on Wednesday morning with a sentence back. The other two questions give me the context to write the right one."

For the cadence side of this — when to fire the poll, how long to leave it open, what to do with the responses — see weekly check-ins that members actually answer: four templates and a schedule.

What questions should you not ask?

Two categories to retire.

Open subjective ratings without a scale — "How are you feeling?" with no number. Members answer in three ways: "fine", "good", "tired". You cannot trend those, and the member knows you cannot. The check-in stops feeling like coaching and starts feeling like small talk.

Yes/no questions about effort — "Did you give it your best this week?". Nobody answers no. You have invited a polite lie into a coaching relationship that lives on the opposite of that.

Anything that requires the member to do calendar arithmetic — "How many hours did you spend on the programme this week?". You will get a guess, and your guess is as good as theirs.

Related reading: how often should a coaching group check in — the evidence-based answer, and how Nadia Patel uses a three-question check-in to hit 94% completion on an 8-week diabetes reset.