Coaching a client who keeps hitting the same friction with one person and can't see their part
This is for you if a capable client keeps hitting the same wall with one person, a manager, a peer, or a direct report, and can't see their own part in it. From the inside, it reads as entirely the other person's problem. You want to show them the half of the friction they can't see.
Before you start, you need a working read on both people's styles: your client's from their results, and the other person's from how you and your client already see them work. Their own report helps, but you don't need it.
Reading your client's blind spots against the other person's style turns the friction from a vague clash into one workable thing: how your client's blind spot lands on this person. About sixty minutes.
- Name the relationship and the recurring moment. Make it concrete: the meeting where it always goes sideways, the message that always lands wrong.
- Line up your client's blind spots with a read of the other person's style. Open your client's Uncovering Your Blind Spots (each is the shadow of a real strength), and name how the other person builds trust, decides, and handles conflict, from their Understanding Styles if you have it, otherwise from what you both know of their type. Pick the blind spot most likely to be live in this friction.
- Draw the recognition out. Ask, don't tell. Start from the other person's chair: "Read how this person builds trust. Now walk me through last Thursday. What do you think they experienced?" Then turn it: "Where might a real strength of yours, turned up high, have landed differently than you meant?" Keep the framing on how a strength lands, not blame.
When the client sees their own part, that flash of recognition is the work. Stop there. Go deeper on your own terms; the questions below are built for this moment.
- When you're ready to close, land on one behavior. One thing the client will do differently in their next interaction, carrying the insight from the map: "In Thursday's review, before I give my call, I ask what they're seeing first."
The client owns the recognition. You own the structure that made it safe to look.
Coaching questions
Remember, this isn't a worksheet to run in order. Once your client has seen their own part, pull whatever fits the room and follow where it goes. Here are some questions that help you do that.
Sitting with the recognition
- What did you just see about your part in this?
- What's it like to notice that the strength you rely on most is landing hardest on this person?
- When you turn that strength all the way up, what's it like to be on the other side of it?
- What have you been calling their problem that might be the two of you meeting badly?
Widening it
- Where else does this move show up for you?
- Who else tends to get the turned-up version of this strength?
- What kind of person seems to pull this side out of you?
Moving toward change
- What would it look like to ease off, even a little, the next time you're with them?
- How would you know it was starting to work?
