Coaching a client weighing a big leap
This is for you if a client can name the move they want, but fear holds them at the edge. A new role, a new field, their own thing. They wait to feel ready, it never comes, and the wait costs them.
Have your client pull one thing from each of two report sections. From Aligned Work Areas, the job-area card that pulls at them. From Uncovering Your Blind Spots, the blind spot most likely driving the freeze.
Their fear feels vague and oversized, and it hides a second thing: staying feels free, so no one ever counts what it costs. This exercise helps your client make the fear specific and put a real number on what the waiting takes from them. About thirty minutes.
- Point the leap at the card. The move is one line aimed at it: "go back to the hands-on design this card describes," not a someday.
- Write the worst case in full. Ask what they fear, and rate each one to ten for how permanent it is. Push past a vague "it won't work" to the real scene: six months in, they hate it, and they have taken a pay cut.
- For each fear, two columns. What could they do now to make it less likely? If it happened anyway, how would they get back to where they stand today? Most worst cases turn out more preventable, and more survivable, than they ever feel from the edge.
- Name the inside risk. Take the blind spot from Uncovering Your Blind Spots, the quiet way they could undermine it. Write it down and name one guardrail. If the blind spot is waiting until they feel certain, the guardrail is a decision date they hold, ready or not.
- Count the cost of staying. What does one more year here cost them? Five? Ten? Name it: the energy, the skill they never build, the person they stop becoming. And another year of not doing the work on that card.
- Land on one small first step. Not the whole jump. One reversible probe this week: coffee with someone in the role, or one honest conversation. Have them write the exact line: "By Friday, I will ..."
Once the worst case is specific, it turns out smaller than the dread. And the cost of staying turns out bigger than it felt. When those two swap places, your client stops waiting to feel brave and just starts moving.
Coaching questions
Not a worksheet to run in order. Once the fear is specific and the cost of staying is out, pull what fits the room.
Sitting with the fear
- When you picture the worst case in full, how much of it is actually permanent?
- What has this fear been protecting you from having to do?
- If a friend laid out this exact plan, what would you tell them?
Widening it
- Where else has staying "safe" quietly cost you the most?
- What did the last leap you were scared of actually teach you?
- Who do you know who made a move like this? What do you notice about them now?
Moving toward change
- Of everything on the worst-case list, which one thing, handled now, shrinks the fear most?
- What is the smallest step that would tell you more than all this thinking has?
- A year from now, what would you regret not having started this week?
