What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from On Writing Well
Renata was writing up session notes for a mentee before their next call, and the draft read that the mentee should "continue to operationalize their leadership development trajectory through intentional stakeholder engagement." She stopped and read it again, unsure what she was actually asking the mentee to do on Monday morning. The real advice, underneath the language, was much smaller: talk to your two skip-level reports before the reorg announcement, not after. She'd dressed the plain advice up because the fancier version felt more like something a professional coach should say, more like it justified the hour they'd spent together. But a mentee reading it before a stressful week needed the plain version, the one with an actual verb and an actual deadline. Renata rewrote the note in four sentences and sent it, feeling slightly less impressive and considerably more useful.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Clutter is the enemy in your session notes and feedback
A coach writes a feedback email full of terms like "leverage your authentic leadership presence to drive stakeholder buy-in" because the vocabulary sounds like expert-level coaching language. The client reads it twice and still isn't sure what to actually do differently in tomorrow's meeting. Practice: After drafting any note, find the one sentence that contains the actual action you want the person to take, and move it to the top. Cut every framework term that isn't doing real work, and replace it with the plain verb underneath it.
After drafting any note, find the one sentence that contains the actual action you want the person to take, and move it to the top. Cut every framework term that isn't doing real work, and replace it with the plain verb underneath it.
Clarity of writing requires clarity of thought about what the client actually needs
A coach writes that a client should "build greater self-awareness around communication patterns" without having pinned down which specific conversation or behavior prompted the note. The vague phrase covers for the fact that the coach hasn't yet identified the actual pattern worth naming. Practice: Before writing feedback, write down the one specific moment from the conversation that the advice is actually about. If you can't name the moment, the advice isn't specific enough to be useful yet, no matter how it's worded.
Before writing feedback, write down the one specific moment from the conversation that the advice is actually about. If you can't name the moment, the advice isn't specific enough to be useful yet, no matter how it's worded.
Revise ruthlessly on the summaries clients rely on
A coach writes session notes immediately after a call, still full of the conversation's natural back-and-forth, and sends them unedited. The client receives a page of loosely connected thoughts instead of the two or three points that actually mattered. Practice: Write the notes, then cut them down to the three points a client would still remember a week later. If a sentence doesn't support one of those three points, delete it, even if it was an interesting part of the conversation.
Write the notes, then cut them down to the three points a client would still remember a week later. If a sentence doesn't support one of those three points, delete it, even if it was an interesting part of the conversation.
Personality survives simplicity in coaching feedback
A coach's actual judgment and care come through more clearly in a short, plain note than in one dressed up with framework language, because the plain version shows exactly what the coach noticed and thought mattered. Clients remember coaches who tell them something specific and true in a sentence they can act on, not the ones who sound most fluent in a model. Simplicity here isn't a loss of authority — it's frequently the clearest evidence of it.
Some clients expect and value the vocabulary of a specific coaching framework, so cutting it entirely can undercut the sense that a structured method is being applied. The workable approach is to name the framework term once, briefly, and then translate every actual instruction into plain, specific language the client can act on without decoding it first.
Name one thing, honestly
Look back at your last written note to a client or mentee — could they have told a colleague, in their own words, exactly what you asked them to do?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Write the notes, then cut them down to the three points a client would still remember a week later. If a sentence doesn't support one of those three points, delete it, even if it was an interesting part of the conversation.