The Wins-First Coaching Open
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Partaker's standard opening structure for a coaching session, built around a specific psychographic: high-performing founders never give themselves enough time or credit for what has gone well, and default immediately to the gap — what hasn't been done, what isn't working. The open counteracts that by anchoring in wins before problems. He asks for wins over a fixed recent window, splits them explicitly into professional and personal so the personal side cannot be skipped, and only then moves to what he calls the real-time agenda: the challenges, frustrations and issues the client wants to work on. Naming the agenda items up front lets both parties compress them into a short ordered list and pick a starting point, which keeps a long session on track.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name the psychographic out loud
State the tendency being counteracted — that this type of person looks straight at the gap and rarely credits what went well. Making it explicit is what gives the wins question its weight.
- 2
Ask for wins over a fixed window
Ask what has gone well and what can be celebrated over a defined recent period — in this session, the last two weeks. The window keeps the answer concrete rather than vague.
Pro tip Checking a calendar is a legitimate aid; Ali said he always has to look at his because he can't otherwise remember what he actually did.
- 3
Split professional and personal
Ask for professional wins and personal wins as separate prompts. Left as one question, founders return only professional answers.
Watch out Probe gently on the home front, but let the client defer anything they'd rather discuss offline.
- 4
Build the real-time agenda
Ask what would make this session most useful — challenges, frustrations, issues on their mind. Let them list items freely without discussion.
- 5
Compress the agenda to keywords
Play the list back as a short ordered set of one-word handles. Ali's three items compressed to suite, offer, metrics.
Pro tip The compressed list doubles as a progress marker through a long session.
- 6
Pick a starting point and begin
Choose the item that the others depend on — here the product suite, because it related to the broad vision for the company — and confirm the choice before diving in.
In the wild
Asked for wins over the last two weeks, Ali listed three professional ones: a mastermind in Paris on scaling a business, a filming day that produced three videos where two would normally count as a win, and reaching 95% completion on the sales page for the upcoming productivity community. On personal wins he offered the gym two days earlier and a move back to London that went off broadly without a hitch. Partaker then asked for the real-time agenda, which produced product suite, the productivity lab offer, and metrics and scorecards.
→ The three items compressed to 'suite, offer, metrics' and the session started with suite because it tied to the company's broad vision.
Common mistakes
Opening on problems
Starting with what is broken confirms the founder's existing bias toward the gap and forfeits the only reliable moment to bank recent progress. Partaker treats the wins anchor as non-optional — 'we always anchor first with well what's gone well'.
Leaving the agenda implicit
Without a stated real-time agenda, a long session drifts toward whatever the client raises most emotionally. The compressed keyword list makes it visible when one topic has consumed the whole hour.
From the transcript
“the psychographic of the typical person that I work with um you included is that they never give themselves enough time or credit for the…”
“as you know we always anchor first with well what's gone well what can we celebrate over the last two weeks”
“so real-time agenda so what would make this session most useful for you challenges frustrations issues things in your mind”
From the episode
A Brutally Honest Conversation With My CEO Coach - Eric Partaker
Eric Partaker