Encore
Statement
Reflection & Journaling Tools
A private, inward-facing document — one paragraph that names
the encore shape you are committing to, written for yourself,
not for an audience.
Where This Tool Helps
The pull when writing anything about what comes next is toward the audience. You start writing about your encore work and the language starts positioning: who it is for, why it matters, what makes it different. The paragraph fills up with words that are accurate but public — the version you would say to someone you wanted to impress or persuade. This is useful for later. At this stage in the coaching work, it is the wrong move.
The Encore Statement is written before any positioning. It is an inward document — the contract you are making with yourself about how the next decade gets spent. Because it faces inward, it can hold specifics that a positioning statement would smooth over: what exactly you are building, the particular people or organizations it is for, and what you are explicitly not building. Most encore clients find the fourth prompt the hardest. Naming what you are not building requires you to let go of something that still has pull — a board seat in the same industry, an advisory role that recreates the old authority structure, a fractional engagement that is really just the old job at lower intensity. Until you name what you are not doing, the statement is incomplete.
The final paragraph integrates the four prompts. The prose quality does not matter much. What matters is that the paragraph is specific enough that you could read it six months from now and know whether you honored it or drifted.
How to Use This Worksheet
- Work the four prompts in order. Do not skip to the final paragraph. Each prompt feeds the next, and the paragraph written without the prompts tends to be the positioning-statement version you are trying to avoid.
- Be specific enough to be wrong. If the prompt asks what you are building, a vague answer ("meaningful work," "advisory work") cannot be wrong — which means it also cannot be tested. Write something specific enough that you could check in six months whether it is still accurate.
- Prompt 4 requires naming something with real pull. If nothing in Prompt 4 costs you anything to write, you have not gone far enough. The items in "what I am not building" should have at least some gravitational pull — work that would be easy to slip back into.
- Write the final paragraph in one sitting after all four prompts are complete. Do not draft it in stages. Read your four responses, then write the paragraph without looking back at individual prompts. The paragraph should synthesize, not summarize.
- Set the revisit date before you close the worksheet. The revisit line is not optional. The statement is an iterative artifact — it changes as the work deepens. The date anchors your commitment to return to it.
Encore Statement Worksheet
Prompt 1 — What I am building
Describe the specific shape of your encore work. Include: time commitment (rough weekly or monthly hours), scale of engagement (one-to-one, small groups, organizational, community-scale), and the mix of activities (teaching, advising, founding, writing, serving on boards, fractional roles). Avoid category labels until you have named what the work actually involves.
Where people get vague: "Something at the intersection of X and Y" is a category, not a shape. Write what you would actually be doing on a Wednesday afternoon.
Prompt 2 — Who it is for
Name the specific population, sector, organization type, or relationship this work is built for. Not "leaders" or "people in transition" — a defined who. Specific enough that you could identify whether a particular person or organization is in it or out of it.
Where people get vague: "Anyone who could benefit" is not a who. "Mid-sized nonprofit organizations in the workforce-development sector" is. The specificity is not a constraint — it is what makes the encore real rather than theoretical.
Prompt 3 — What it replaces in terms of contribution
Name what your primary career did for you and the people it served — the actual contribution, not the job title. Then name where the encore work serves a related but distinct purpose. The question is: what does this work do that the primary career could not, or did not, or stopped doing?
Where people get vague: "I want to give back" is a motive, not a contribution. Name specifically what your primary career produced and what the encore produces differently.
Prompt 4 — What I am not building
Name the specific work, roles, or engagement patterns that would represent a drift back toward the primary career identity — the path of least resistance that looks like the encore but is really the old role in a new context. Examples: board seats in the same industry you just left; advisory roles that recreate the authority structure of your former title; fractional engagements that are functionally your old job at lower intensity.
If nothing in this prompt costs you anything to write, you have not gone far enough. The items here should be things that still have pull — work that would be easy to slip back into.
Where people get vague: Naming what you are not building requires you to let go of something. If the list feels costless, it is incomplete.
The Encore Statement
Using your four responses above, write a single paragraph of 4–6 sentences. Name what you are building, who it is for, what contribution it makes, and what it is not. Write it as a private commitment — specific enough to test, honest enough to revisit.
Date for next reading of this statement:
This statement is an iterative document. The next reading is a check on whether the work and the statement have stayed aligned — or whether one has moved and the other has not caught up.
Before Your Next Session
Read the Final Paragraph Aloud
Where does it sound like something you would say to yourself, and where does it start to sound like something you would say to an audience? The shift in register is the location of the remaining positioning work.
Return to Prompt 4
What is on that list that still has enough pull that it could find its way back in? Name it in the next session.
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