Coaching a client through a blind spot
This is for you when a client's report names a pattern that's costing them and they can't see it yet. Tell them straight and the shutters come down. You want them to reach it themselves and own it.
You can't tell someone their blind spot. Call it a flaw and it lands as a verdict, so they defend, and the defense keeps it hidden. Call it the cost of a strength they own, and the same spot invites ownership. Every blind spot in the report is a strength turned up too high.
Open Uncovering Your Blind Spots in their Career Discovery report, where each is written as the shadow of a strength. Keep Discovering Your Strengths open beside it. Before the session, pick the one blind spot most likely to be live for them right now. You run one, not all ten.
Then run three beats, in order.
Recognition. Don't read the blind spot at them. Name a strength they are proud of from Discovering Your Strengths, then ask for a moment where it ran high. "Tell me about last Tuesday's review." Let them narrate, and the cost surfaces in their own words.
Understanding. Put the blind spot beside the strength they just described. The same eye that catches every flaw won't let a rough draft breathe. There is nothing to defend, because you take nothing away from them.
Choice. Hand the wheel back. Ask what they want to do differently in one moment this week. Keep it small and cued to their calendar: "In Thursday's standup, before I push my plan, I ask one question first." One behavior, in one moment, is what they leave holding.
This is the solo version, off the client's own report. When one relationship keeps surfacing the pattern and the client can't see their part, use the paired-blind-spots activity (C28) instead.
A blind spot you are told about, you argue with. One you find for yourself, you can't un-see. Build the path, don't point down it.
Coaching questions
Not a worksheet to run in order. Once you've picked the blind spot, pull whatever fits the room.
Drawing the recognition out
- Tell me about a recent moment where this strength ran high.
- Walk me through it from the other side of the table.
- What did that moment cost you, if anything?
- Where have you watched this show up before?
Sitting with it
- What is it like to see that the thing costing you here is the thing you are best at?
- If this is a strength run past its edge, where is that edge for you?
- What would ease if you read this one moment differently?
Moving to one change
- What is one moment this week where you would want this to go differently?
- What is the smallest thing you could try there, so small it almost can't fail?
- How would you know, by Friday, that it moved?
