How to move a senior client forward using their Superpower
This is for you when you're coaching a senior client who is good and has quietly stopped moving. They hit their numbers, but something has gone flat. They read it as topping out, a weakness to grind down. You can tell that isn't the whole story.
A stuck high performer reaches for the gap. But often the plateau is not a gap. It is an edge sitting idle: their Superpower barely gets used in the role they hold, firing in a flash then quiet all week. You move it by turning that edge up on one real piece of work, for two weeks.
The report names one of their Superpowers and how to nurture it, but can't see their two weeks. That part is yours.
- Separate the plateau from the gap. Have them name where they have gone flat, then set the fix-my-weakness reflex aside. (If the whole role no longer stretches them, that is a different conversation, about outgrowing the role. Stay here when the edge is there but rarely used.)
- Find where the Superpower sits idle. Read it against the coming two weeks. Where would turning it up change the outcome, and be in their control?
- Design one deploy. Not a development plan. One deliberate move on that piece, running the Superpower hot. Small enough to happen inside two weeks.
- Write it as one if-then line, and set the check-in. "When the real moment happens, I will deploy my Superpower by doing the specific thing." Name the tell, then set a real check-in at a time you both pick.
They leave holding one experiment: the piece of work, the Superpower move, the tell, and the day you check it.
Coaching questions
Not a worksheet. Pull what fits once you can see which edge sits idle.
Separating the plateau from the gap
- Where have you gone flat, and what have you assumed it means about you?
- If the answer were not "fix a weakness," what else could this be?
Finding where it sits idle
- In the last month, when did that edge fire? When did it sit unused?
- Look at the next two weeks. Where would turning it up change the outcome, and sit in your hands?
Committing to one deploy
- What is the one real piece of work you will deploy it on?
- When exactly will you do it, and what will tell you it fired?
- Who will you tell, and when will we check?
