Coaching a client to find where they come alive
This is for you if a client tells you nothing is wrong, and still they want more. They want more of the work that lights them up, but cannot point to it. They are not unhappy; they just cannot name what makes a good day.
You cannot get this by asking. Ask a client what lights them up and you get a considered, tidy answer that is often wrong. So do not ask. Have them gather the evidence instead, then read it together.
The client needs their results in hand. Plan for about thirty minutes together, plus three weeks of light logging on their side.
- Start with the map, before they log anything. Open the client's The Five Types of Work, near the back of their Career Discovery report. Note their primary type and natural complement. Tell them this is a good guess at where they come alive, and three weeks of logging will check it.
- Set up the log. Ask them to note, once a day for about three weeks, the activities that filled the day. For each one, two fast ratings: how absorbed they were, and whether it lifted them or left them flat. Thirty seconds an entry, no essays.
- Read for the pattern, not the list. When the log comes back, look for the entries they rated high on both absorption and energy. Then the ones that left them cold. Cluster them, do not just count them.
- Lay the pattern over their five types. Ask which of the five types (Analytical, Creative, Integrative, Influential, Operational) the high-energy cluster keeps landing in. Often it maps onto their primary or complement, and now they have their own proof of it. Sometimes it surprises them, and that surprise is often the most useful thing in it.
When the client sees it, that recognition is the work. Stop and stay there; the questions below are built for this moment.
- When you're ready to close, land on one move. Name the type of work to steer toward, in the client's own words. Then one small step to get more of it this month: an ask, a swap, a project to volunteer for. Keep it small enough to happen before your next session.
The client owns the pattern. You own the frame that made it visible.
Coaching questions
Remember, this is not a worksheet to run top to bottom. Once the client sees the pattern, pull what fits and follow where it goes.
Reading the pattern
- Where did the log surprise you?
- Which stretch would you happily do again tomorrow?
- Looking at your highest entries, what were you actually doing?
Widening it
- Where does that kind of work already show up in your week, even a little?
- Who around you does more of it, and how did they get there?
- When did you last have a real stretch of it?
Moving toward change
- What is one small piece of that work you could ask for this month?
- If nothing shifted, what would you miss most a year from now?
- How will you know a week had more of it?
