Updated June 2026
A quick summary
Good coaching tools do not replace a coach. The tools are as much for the benefit of the coach as their client’s, stopping a useful conversation drifting into a pleasant chat with no practical learning or action afterwards. For someone looking at a business coaching franchise, you are looking for a way to sit opposite an SME owner, ask better questions, make sense of a messy business, and leave them with work they can actually do.
This blog looks at three UK Growth Coach tools that help with that: the Long Haul Flight Planner, the Short Haul Action Planner, and the Business Balance Diary. This is just three from the huge number we have developed, to give you a flavour of our continual learning and self-development as well as support available to our franchisees!
Why the right coaching tools matter when you are the coach
If you are considering becoming a business coach, there is a tempting idea that your experience alone will carry the conversation. If you have led teams, sold, managed money, dealt with pressure, or built a business yourself, that experience has value in mentoring a client but that alone is not enough to increase your client’s capability and confidence.
Your challenge is what happens when a client arrives with a business that is busy, emotional, half-documented and full of moving parts. Where do you start? What do you ask first? How do you stop the loudest problem from stealing the whole session?
Proper coaching tools are essential in enabling a coach to bring meaningful value to a session. They help the coach and the client see what is happening now, what may be causing the drag, what happens if nothing changes, and what practical steps should follow. UK Growth Coach has developed close to 200 tools. Below are just three that show how our approach works in practice.
1. The Long-Haul Flight Planner
The Long Haul Flight Planner is used to help a business owner lift their head from this week’s noise and think properly about the next 5 to 10 years. That sounds simple in theory, but can be hard to realise when you sit with an owner who has been firefighting for years. Ask them what they want, and the first answer is often a loose ‘more profit, better staff, less stress, more freedom.’
These are starting points, but do not fully answer the question. The job of the coach is to use these as a springboard, and allow a plan to form around each one. More profit from where, and why? Better staff in what roles? Less stress caused by what? More freedom to do what with the business and with life outside it?
The planner gives that conversation shape. It links longer-term goals to the 11-point Coaching Star Model, which looks across eleven important areas of a business. The document itself is only one page. It captures the current position, the intended destination, and the factors that need attention. For a franchisee, it stops the coaching relationship becoming purely reactive and gives every later conversation a clear reference point.
2. The Short-Haul Action Planner
Most SME owners will judge your coaching by what changes in the real world, and ‘real world’ to many people means a short-term win. The Short Haul Action Planner is, for this reason, more task oriented.
It takes the bigger goals from the Long-Haul Flight Planner and breaks them into shorter-term milestones, actions, responsibilities and deadlines. Again, it is a single page. Overloaded business owners do not need a binder full of good intentions, they just need to see at a glance what has been agreed, who is doing what by when, and why these actions matter for their future ambitions.
This is also where a coach can be both supportive and firm. If a client says something needs to improve, what does that mean by the end of the week? Who owns it? What evidence will show progress? What is likely to get in the way?
Without that structure, coaching can become enjoyable but soft. The same issue is discussed several times, everyone nods, and nothing much changes but with the Short-Haul Action Planner, it connects the coaching schedule to live priorities, so each session can come back to what was agreed, what happened, what did not happen, and what needs adjusting.
3. The Business Balance Diary
Most business owners have a business that keeps pulling them into whatever is loudest. Staff questions, customer problems, quotes, invoices, emails, small fires, larger fires, all eat away at the business owner’s time. The week disappears and the important work gets pushed into the margins.
The Business Balance Diary helps bring that pattern into the open. It looks at the regular activities the owner needs to protect, then gives them proper space in the diary before the week starts. The ultimate aim of this is to make the owner’s stated priorities visible in how they actually spend their time.
For the coach, this tool is revealing. A client may say growth is the priority, but the diary may show no protected time for sales, recruitment, management, finance, systems, or thinking. In any other case, something being named as a priority but given no time would be an obvious contradiction, but a shocking number of business owners fail to see this unless it is laid out for them.
Once the evidence is visible, the coaching can get practical. What should be protected first? What needs to be delegated? What keeps interrupting the week? What is the owner still doing because it feels safer than trusting someone else?
Access to top coaching tools when you become a UK Growth Coach franchisee
These three tools sit inside a much wider UK Growth Coach toolkit for franchisees. The full library of nearly 200 tools has been shaped through years of coaching delivery with SMEs, so franchisees are not left trying to invent their own material in front of paying clients.
Don’t just take our word for it — listen to what one of our franchisees has to say about working in the UK Growth Coach framework.
If you are exploring what a coaching franchise looks like in practice, the business coaching courses page covers more about how our franchisee training is structured.
To find out whether UK Growth Coach is the right fit for you, the next step is a Discovery Day conversation. Get in touch via the details below:
Top coaching tools FAQs
What are the most useful coaching tools for business coaches?
The most useful coaching tools are the ones that help a client think clearly, make decisions and take action between sessions. In SME coaching, that usually means planning tools, goal-setting frameworks, action planners, diagnostic models and diary structures.
What is the Long-Haul Flight Planner?
The Long-Haul Flight Planner is a strategic planning tool we have developed, which we use to help business owners set their company’s direction for the next 5 to 10 years. It gives the coach and client a clear view of where the business is now, where it is heading, and which parts of the business need attention if that destination is going to be realistic.
What is the Short-Haul Action Planner used for?
The Short-Haul Action Planner turns bigger goals into shorter-term actions. It helps define what needs to happen, who is responsible, and when progress should be reviewed. For a coach, it is a practical way to keep the client moving rather than letting good intentions fade after the session.
How is a coaching tool different from a business template?
A generic business template is usually something a person completes once and then forgets. A coaching tool should stay alive in the work. It is revisited, questioned, updated and used to create accountability. The coach brings the tool to life by asking the right questions around it.
Why do business owners struggle to follow through?
Many business owners are capable and committed, but their week is full of competing demands. Follow-through slips when actions are too vague, deadlines are loose, or the owner has not made time for the work. A good coaching tool makes those weak points visible before they become excuses, and seeks to resolve them
What is the Business Balance Diary?
The Business Balance Diary is a diary planning tool that helps business owners protect time for the activities that matter. It can show whether the owner’s calendar reflects their priorities, or whether the business is still being run mainly by reaction.
What tools do UK Growth Coach franchisees receive?
UK Growth Coach franchisees receive access to a library of close to 200 tools covering planning, goal setting, business development, leadership, team performance and more. Training is included so franchisees understand when to use the tools, how to introduce them, and how to connect them to the client’s wider coaching journey. The library is constantly being added to, and we encourage franchisee input too.
Do I need to be a qualified coach before becoming a franchisee?
A formal coaching qualification is not always the deciding factor. Commercial experience, curiosity, confidence with people and a willingness to follow a proven structure all matter. The franchise training helps you understand the coaching method, the tools and the practical delivery of the model.
How does a coaching franchise help compared with starting alone?
A coaching franchise gives you an existing framework, tools, training and support, rather than leaving you to build everything from scratch. That can save a great deal of trial and error. You still have to do the work, but you are not starting with a blank page.
How do I find out more about becoming a UK Growth Coach franchisee?
The starting point is a Discovery Day conversation. You can call 01444 810536 or email connect@ukgcfranchise.co.uk to find out more and book your place.
