Coaching a client to prove a strength with a story
This is for you if a capable client can list their strengths but goes blank when asked for a time they showed one. They can name what they are good at. They just freeze when asked to prove it.
The freeze is rarely about the strength. It is about how the strength is stored. Held as a label like "I'm good with people," it has no scene attached. So when the room asks for a moment, your client reaches into an empty drawer.
So build each strength back into a real scene, told in their own voice. Now proof is ready before the question comes.
Start from their own results. Open your client's Discovering Your Strengths in their Career Discovery report and pick the three worth proving. Go for the ones that matter most for the roles they are chasing.
A strength marked as rare is worth its own story. One story each. Plan for about sixty minutes together.
Your client's report marks their rarest strengths with a ✦. If they've taken the Superpower profile, it goes deeper on exactly these: it ranks every strength by how rare it is, shows the exact percentile they land in, and names the rare combinations only they have.
Build each story in four beats. This is the old interview standby, STAR, recast so the last beat does more.
- Setting. One line of context. When, where, what was going on.
- Tension. What was hard, and what was at stake. No stakes, no story. This is the hook.
- Action. What your client did, in the first person. Catch the "we" that hides them. The interviewer is hiring the "I."
- Realization. How it turned out, and one line on what it showed. The story names the strength, so your client never has to claim it.
The freeze breaks when you ask for the moment, not the trait. Do not accept "I am collaborative." Ask, "When did that actually decide something?" Push past the first tidy answer to a real day.
Then make it sound like them. Open their Understanding Styles and read how they naturally communicate. Shape the telling to that register: some clients land it fast and blunt, others careful and precise, others warm and personal.
A story in their own voice holds up under pressure. A borrowed script cracks.
You feel the shift when your client stops reaching for the adjective and drops into the scene. Oh, that time. Stop pushing there. Once they are in the moment, the story almost tells itself, and the questions below help you draw it out.
By the end, your client holds three written stories, one per strength. Each is a scene they can tell in sixty seconds.
The claim was always easy. The proof is what the room remembers, and now your client walks in holding it.
Your client owns the proof. You own the shape that made it easy to find.
Coaching questions
Remember, this is not a worksheet to run top to bottom. Once your client is in a real moment, pull what fits and follow where it goes.
Pulling out the scene
- When did this last decide something real?
- Who else was there, and what was on the line?
- What would have gone wrong if you had not stepped in?
Sharpening it
- What did you do that someone in your seat might not have?
- Where are you in this story, and where does the "we" hide you?
- If you had sixty seconds, what has to stay?
Making it sound like you
- Tell it the way you would tell a friend, not a panel.
- What is the one line you want them to remember?
