How to run a practice session on Robin

This is our opinionated guide to practice sessions. Robin doesn't police any of it — the platform is shaped around a view of what good practice looks like, and this page sets that view out so you can use it or push back on it.

The one-line version: a practice session is a real coaching session where the client happens to be a coach. Everything below follows from that.

Before: decide who's coaching

One of you coaches. The other brings something real to be coached on. Decide this before anything is booked — it's the single decision the whole session hangs on, and it's why every Schedule button on Robin asks who's hosting first.

• If they're coaching you, book one of their sessions from their booking page.
• If you're coaching them, offer them a time from your own booking page — they confirm with one tap.

The booking card shows both roles before anyone commits ("Jon: coach · you: practice client"), so there's no ambiguity about what you've each agreed to. More on what those words mean: Host and participant.

Want both directions? Book two sessions. A swap-halfway call sounds efficient, but it shortchanges both of you — two half-sessions instead of one full one each — and it muddies whose hours and whose records they are (more on that below). Take a turn each: two sessions, one role per session, each one whole.

Before: bring something real

Our strong opinion: practise on real topics, not invented ones. A made-up scenario gives the coach a client who doesn't resist, doesn't surprise, and doesn't care about the outcome — which is to say, no practice at all. As the practice client, bring something genuinely on your mind: a decision you're circling, a stuck project, a pattern you keep noticing. It doesn't have to be deep. It has to be true.

This is also what makes peer practice worth more than practising on friends and family — your practice client is a coach, so after the session they can tell you what the coaching felt like from the inside.

During: one role, the whole hour

Hold the frame for the full session. The coach coaches; the client is a client — not a co-coach, not a commentator, not "let me just step out of role for a second". Breaking role mid-session is the most common way practice sessions go soft: the moment it becomes a conversation about coaching, nobody is being coached.

Run it like the real thing:

• Contract at the top. What does the client want from this hour? How will you both know it was useful? Two minutes, real contract.
• Keep the time. Sessions on Robin have a scheduled length — finishing on time is part of the craft being practised.
• Transcribe if it serves you. The host can turn on transcription for the session; the transcript is the host's to keep and their responsibility to protect (who controls your data). Reviewing your own coaching verbatim is one of the fastest ways to improve.

If feedback is part of your practice, keep it after the session proper — coach the full arc first, then step out together. Better still, put it in writing: hosts can attach a feedback form to a session type, and Robin asks the client to fill it in after the call.

After: log it, then mine it

• Log the hour. The session lands in your logbook against the session and the partner — coaching given if you coached, coaching received if you were coached. Keeping this clean as you go beats reconstructing it at credential time.
• Read your transcript (if you took one) with one question: where did the client do the work, and where did I do it for them?
• Book the return leg. If your partner wants their turn, that's their session to host — takes a minute from your chat.

Why one role per call

It's how the profession counts coaching. The ICF defines a coaching experience hour, verbatim, as "A full 60-minute session with a client who has hired you specifically as their coach (not in any other capacity)" (ICF experience requirements). Peer practice qualifies, because the ICF counts barter as payment: "You receive payment (or barter, such as peer-to-peer coaching or coaching in exchange for goods or services) for coaching a client." But it's the coaching that counts, so only the time you spend as the coach counts toward your hours — time being coached doesn't. A 60-minute swap call is two 30-minute fragments; two full sessions are two full, cleanly countable hours.

One nuance to get right: coaching inside a training programme doesn't count on its own. In the ICF's words, "coaching within a training program, or with students, trainers, or mentors, doesn't count unless it's done outside the classroom, with a real client, and separate from the training credits." Independent peer practice on Robin is outside the classroom, with a real client, so it counts.

It's how responsibility stays clear. One host per session means one coach clearly answerable for the transcript and everything disclosed in it. A swapped session has no clean answer to whose records they are — who's responsible for what, and the professional standard behind it, is on Who hosts a session.

It's better practice. A full arc — contract, work, close — is the thing being practised. Half a session practises half an arc.

The ICF doesn't forbid swapping roles in a meeting — its rules are about what counts and who's responsible, and one role per session is the shape that satisfies them cleanly.

Questions

Message Jon directly in the app — he reads every message and answers personally.