Coaching a client through recurring friction with one person
This is for you when a capable client keeps hitting the same wall with one person and can't see their own part. To them it's all the other person's problem. You want to show them the half they can't see.
You need a read on both styles: your client's from their results, the other person's from how you both see them work. Their own report helps but isn't needed. About sixty minutes.
- Name the relationship and the recurring moment. Make it concrete: the meeting that always goes sideways, the message that lands wrong.
- Line up your client's blind spots with the other person's style. Open your client's Uncovering Your Blind Spots; each is the shadow of a real strength. 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. Pick the blind spot most likely 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 strength of yours, turned up high, have landed differently than you meant?" Keep it on how a strength lands, not blame.
When the client sees their own part, that flash of recognition is the work. Stop there.
- To close, land on one behavior. One thing the client will do differently next time: "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
This isn't a worksheet to run in order. Once your client has seen their own part, pull whatever fits the room.
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?
