Coaching a client who didn't do the agreed work, again
This is for you if the agreed action didn't happen again. You can feel the pull to nag, and the quiet fear that you're failing this client. You want to move on it without adding pressure, and without reading the miss as a verdict on either of you.
Start by moving the miss off the client's character. A missed action is rarely proof they don't want it, or that you didn't push hard enough. Follow-through fails on weak structure far more often than on weak will. So the miss is a structure to fix, not a character to judge.
That reframe is also for you. This is when your own doubt bites, and doubt reads a miss wrong. You own the structure; the client owns the insight. A missed action means the structure needs work, not that either of you failed.
Before you resize anything, make one judgment call, and make it out loud with the client, not in your own head. Is something pulling against this goal, or has it just sat there, untouched? Ask it plainly: if part of them didn't want this, what might that part be protecting?
Sometimes a payoff in not acting surfaces: a loyalty the goal would strain, a fear it stirs, a comfort it would cost to lose. You can only hear that from the client; no report will show it to you. If it's there, this isn't plain avoidance, and shrinking the ask won't touch it. Surface that pull first (the competing-commitment map, C8).
More often, nothing pulls back. The client wants it, and the step just never happened. Now open their Career Discovery report to Uncovering Your Blind Spots and find the one sitting under this goal.
Each blind spot is the shadow of a real strength turned up too high. Here it names the exact snag. Maybe a thoroughness makes them wait until they feel ready; maybe a drive to get it right holds them back until it's perfect. "Plain avoidance" is too vague to act on, but their own blind spot tells you its shape, and which way to shrink.
Rebuild the ask so it sidesteps that snag.
- Shrink it below the size where the blind spot fires. Not "reach out to your network," but "send one message to one person," small enough it never has to feel ready or perfect.
- Cue it to something they already do, so it rides an existing moment instead of waiting on the snag. "After Friday coffee, before email, I send it." A cue beats a resolution.
- Make it observable in one line. They tell you yes or no, done or not, with no story needed.
Keep a human behind it, and let that human be you, not an app reminder. A nudge from someone who knows the client moves behavior; an automated alert does not.
Then hand the goal back as you go. The client stays accountable to their own goal, not to keeping you happy. A structure that makes them lean on you is one you'll be carrying next week too.
What you leave with is one line the client will actually do: small, cued, and observable. Next to it, you can name the blind spot that kept the last version slipping. That is the structure doing its job.
Coaching questions
This isn't a worksheet to run in order. Once you know which of the two you're in, pull whatever fits the room and follow the client where they go. A few that help.
Finding out what actually stopped it
- What got in the way of this one, honestly?
- If part of you didn't want to do it, what might that part have been protecting?
- What would have had to be true for this to happen?
- When in the week did you last think about it, and what happened next?
Right-sizing the next step
- What is the smallest version of this you couldn't talk yourself out of?
- What already-fixed moment in your week could this ride on?
- How will you and I both know, in one line, whether it happened?
Handing it back
- Whose goal is this, really?
- What would make this something you do for yourself, not for our next session?
