Guided prompts to help you move from feeling stuck to taking clear, self-directed action, using evidence-based coaching questions.
These three prompts ask you to recall moments when you felt powerful, in control, and confident - would starting there give us a different foundation before we move into the challenge you want to explore?
A VP of product has been repeating a version of 'I'm not a strategic thinker' across multiple sessions. The statement functions as a conclusion - she leads with it and then builds evidence for it. She has not been asked to locate the contrasting experience, and the coaching has been working around the belief rather than examining it directly.
Use this as a session opener without framing it heavily. 'I want you to answer three questions out loud - or write them first if that helps. What makes you feel powerful? What makes you feel in control? What makes you feel confident?' Then give her space to answer without immediately connecting it to the presenting belief. The juxtaposition does the work - her answers to the three prompts will typically contradict the 'I'm not strategic' story more effectively than any direct challenge.
Listen for whether her answers to all three prompts are dominated by execution and doing - 'I feel powerful when I deliver on a deadline, when I get a project across the line' - with no strategic content. If that's the case, the self-assessment may have a kernel of truth that deserves examination rather than just reframe. Also listen for hesitation at 'confident' - clients who answer power and control fluently but stall at confidence are pointing you somewhere.
After she's answered all three, ask: 'Which of these three do you access most easily?' Then: 'Which is hardest to hold onto when things go sideways?' The answer to the second question usually reveals where the self-narrative gets activated. Then: 'What would need to be different for that to be more stable?' This moves from diagnosis to design without needing to directly challenge the belief.
If a client who describes herself as not strategic provides answers that are full of systems thinking, pattern recognition, and cross-functional insight - and she doesn't notice the contradiction - that gap between self-perception and demonstrated capability is worth naming directly. Severity: low. Not as a correction but as an observation: 'What you just described sounds like strategic thinking. Where does the story that you're not strategic come from?'
A director of operations has spent six months focused entirely on protecting her team during a reorg. She's been effective and others have noticed. But in the process she has completely stopped thinking about her own career, her own capabilities, and her own direction. She arrives to sessions talking only about the organization's problems. The three prompts can pull her back toward herself.
Frame it explicitly as a refocus: 'We've been spending most of our sessions on the organization. I want to take 10 minutes to put attention back on you. Three questions - what makes you feel powerful, in control, confident. Answer them for yourself, not in relation to the team.' The reframe is necessary because clients in protective mode often feel guilty taking up time with their own experience.
If she answers all three prompts in terms of the team - 'I feel powerful when I can protect my team, in control when I can give them clarity, confident when they're performing' - she has entirely externalized her sense of self. There's no self-anchored version of agency present in the answers. That's data. It doesn't mean the orientation is wrong for the current moment, but it is worth noting as a pattern.
Start with: 'In all three of those answers, how much of what you described was about you and how much was about the team?' If the answer is 'mostly the team,' that's the coaching observation to work with: 'When you're not in protective mode - when the situation settles - what does your sense of your own power and capability rest on?' That question targets the self-concept underneath the caretaking role.
If she has genuine difficulty accessing any sense of her own power, control, or confidence independent of her impact on others, the pattern may be deeper than a situational response to the reorg. Severity: moderate. Prolonged self-erasure in a professional context can indicate identity fusion with the protector role. Note it and return to it - don't pursue it intensively in a single session.
A senior consultant lost a major client account he had managed for four years. The loss was partly his responsibility and partly organizational. He knows both. He's now in a pattern of excessive second-guessing and has lost confidence in his ability to read client relationships. The three prompts target the resourceful state he had before the setback - which still exists but is currently inaccessible.
Give this as an in-session exercise. 'I want to start today differently. Rather than working on the account situation directly, I want you to answer three questions about yourself - not about what happened. What makes you feel powerful? In control? Confident?' The instruction to bypass the event is important. His brain wants to return to the setback; the prompts redirect toward existing capability.
Watch whether his answers reference the period before the account loss or the period after. Answers about the past - 'I used to feel powerful when I was leading a complex client situation' - indicate the setback has separated him from his prior sense of himself. Answers in the present tense indicate more resilience. If all three prompts produce past-tense responses, the recovery work is more substantive.
After all three prompts, ask: 'Which of those is still accessible to you today?' Let him identify where his sense of agency is still intact. Then: 'What would have to happen for the others to come back online?' This sequence builds forward from what's still working rather than starting from the loss. The goal is a specific, actionable observation about what conditions support his recovery - not reassurance.
If he cannot identify any current source of power, control, or confidence - if every answer is past-tense or qualified with 'before this happened' - the setback has had a larger impact on his self-concept than typical professional disappointment would explain. Severity: moderate. Assess whether the response is proportionate to the loss. Consider whether additional support outside coaching would be useful.
Client talks about wanting to grow but responds to setbacks with fixed patterns of self-protection
ExecutiveA client is avoiding something important and keeps finding reasons not to move forward
ADHDA client consistently moves from mistakes to global self-condemnation rather than specific accountability
