Helping a client make an insight stick between sessions
This is for you when a client leaves a session lit up. They saw something real and named what to change. Then an ordinary week happened, and none of it did. The insight is still true; nothing changed.
Your client understood something, the easy half. Understanding rarely changes what someone does on a Tuesday. Closing that gap is structure, not willpower, and structure is yours to build.
So before they leave, build one small loop that runs without you: an action tail, a cued step that follows the session home. It fails when it is too vague, too big, or tied to nothing. Five parts fix that.
One thing, from their own report. Pull one item from today's results. If a strength woke them up, open Discovering Your Strengths and name the one to lean into. If a cost landed, open Uncovering Your Blind Spots and name the one to soften. One, not five: ten small wins compete, one repeats.
Make it tiny. Shrink it until it is almost too small to skip. A tiny action that happens beats a big one that doesn't. Not "delegate more" but "hand off one task."
Cue it to something they already do. Tie the action to the back of a daily habit, and the routine remembers for you. For instance: "After I pour my coffee, I will write the one hard sentence."
Make it repeatable. A one-off changes nothing. Design it to run a few times before your next session, so the client learns by doing.
Make it observable in one line. Agree on a yes-or-no check for Friday: did it happen, and how often. Skip "how did it feel." A feeling fades; a count is honest.
The client leaves holding one written line, "After X, I will Y," plus the Friday check. You hold the same line and open the next session with it.
If the action didn't happen, don't push harder. Shrink it, or find a better cue. A missed action means the loop needs another look, never that the client let anyone down.
Coaching questions
Not a script to read in order. Pull whatever helps the client build their own tail.
Finding the one thing
- Of everything today, which one line do you most want still true next week?
- Which strength did today make you want to lean into, and which cost to watch?
- If only one thing changed before we meet again, what would it be?
Shrinking it and cueing it
- What is the smallest version you could do on an ordinary day?
- What do you already do every day that this could ride on?
- After what, exactly, will you do it?
Making it stick
- In one line, how will we both know whether it happened?
- What would make this easy to skip, and how do we design that out?
