A good person says they feel stuck and the talk keeps circling the to-do list
This is for you if one of your strong people says they feel stuck, and each talk just circles their task list. You reshuffle the work, and a week later they are just as flat.
The talk circles the list because you both treat "stuck" as an effort problem, and the list is where effort shows up. But the tasks were never the thing.
Most of the time, "stuck" is really about fit. There is work this person is built for that their week has almost none of. Or a strength of theirs has turned into the thing that keeps snagging them. You'll find both in their report.
Before your next 1-1, open their Career Discovery report to two sections: The Five Types of Work and Uncovering Your Blind Spots.
- The Five Types of Work names their primary type and its complement, the two kinds of work that give them energy (Analytical, Creative, Integrative, Influential, Operational). Read it against their real week: how much lands in those two, how much outside.
- Uncovering Your Blind Spots lists the shadows of their strengths. Scan for the one live now: a strength turned up so high it has become the thing tripping them (over-owning, over-polishing, double-checking everything).
Run the 1-1 off the read. Bring the shape of the work, not your conclusion, and let them land on it.
- Name the pattern, not the tasks. "You've said stuck a few times. I don't think this is about the list. Can we look at the shape of the work instead?"
- Put the read in front of them. Ask which of their two energizing types shows up in a normal week, and which they've barely touched in a month. Let them count out loud.
- When they name it, stop. The moment they name the missing work, or the strength that keeps snagging them, that naming is the work. Don't rush to solve it.
- Close on one change. Agree one thing to add, hand off, or reshape over the next two weeks so more of the starved work is back in reach. Write it down, with a date to check it.
One boundary. This is for the moment they name the stuckness to you. If instead you are watching their output slip and about to act on it, that is a different, more careful conversation. You owe them the fit read before the performance story.
Coaching questions
This isn't a script to read in order. Once they start looking at the shape of the work, pull whatever fits.
Getting off the task list
- When you say stuck, stuck from what? If the whole list vanished tomorrow, would the feeling go with it?
- What did a good week here look like? When was the last one?
Finding the work that went missing
- If we added more of that missing work to your week, what would it look like here?
- What's on your plate that anyone could do, crowding out the work only you do well?
- Is there a strength of yours that has turned into the thing tripping you?
Moving to one change
- What's the smallest change that puts a little of that work back in reach?
- How would we both know, two weeks out, it was starting to work?
