Coaching a client through a role redesign
This is for you if a capable client has decided the role is a dead end. The only question is whether to grit their teeth or walk. They treat the job as fixed, something to accept or escape with nothing in between. You suspect the problem is in the shape of the work, not the whole role, and that can change.
Before you start, you need your client's results, specifically The Five Types of Work near the back of their Career Discovery report. It names the kinds of work that give them energy instead of taking it. That is what the redesign pulls toward. Their results are the point; a redesign built on a guess is just generic advice.
The choice feels binary because a job looks like one solid block you keep or quit. It is really three movable parts: the tasks in the week, the people around them, and what they tell themselves it is for.
Each part has more give than a title admits. Reshaping all three has a plain name, job crafting, and it is what you are about to run. About thirty minutes.
- Sketch the role as it is, in three layers. On one side of a page, have them list the tasks that fill a normal week. Then who they do each with, then what they privately think the work is for. Keep it concrete, not the job description.
- Read it against the work that energizes them. Open their primary and complement in The Five Types of Work. Mark each task on the sketch: energizing, draining, or neutral. The pattern usually shows fast: their most energizing work is barely there, while the tasks that wear them down have taken over.
- Draw the "after." For each layer, one reshape toward the energizing work. A task to grow, trade, or reframe toward their primary type; their Aligned Work Areas cards show what that work looks like in practice. One relationship to add or change, and one story to retell about what a core task is really for.
When the client sees the "after" is reachable without quitting, that the role had give they never used, the recognition has landed. Let it sit. Go deeper on your own terms; the questions below are built for this moment.
- Close on one small experiment, run before any decision to leave. One piece of the after, small enough to try inside the current job. Cue it to something in their week and make it observable in a line. Something like: "For two weeks, I take X and hand off Y, then check Friday if the week felt different."
They leave holding two things: the before-and-after sketch, and one experiment with a date on it. The exit question can wait for the evidence.
Coaching questions
Remember, this isn't a worksheet to run in order. Once the client sees the role has give, pull whatever fits the room and follow where it goes. Here are some questions that help.
Loosening the "it's fixed" story
- Where did you first decide the role couldn't change?
- If you couldn't leave and couldn't complain, what would you change about the week?
- Which part of this job did you build yourself, without being told to?
- What are you treating as fixed that might just be unquestioned?
Finding the reshape
- Which task, if it filled more of the week, would change how you feel by Friday?
- Who could you be doing more of your best work with?
- If you described this work to someone you respect, what would you want it to be for?
Moving to something you can try
- What is the smallest version of this you could try without asking permission?
- What would you need to see in two weeks to know the shape of the work, not the whole role, was the problem?
- Who would notice if you changed this, and how would you want them to find out?
