Self-Care Inventory

A managing director at a consulting firm says she doesn't have time for self-care and frames any discussion of it as something for people whose work isn't demanding. She's been increasingly irritable in leadership meetings, her sleep is poor, and her PA has noted she's cancelling personal commitments. She came to coaching for leadership effectiveness, not wellbeing.

Don't introduce this as self-care - introduce it as a performance audit. 'We're going to look at 27 practices across five categories and assess which ones are currently active in your life and which have dropped off. This isn't about balance; it's about identifying where the infrastructure that supports sustained high performance is degraded.' The R/S/C rating plus domain question - which domain is costing you the most right now - frames the tool as diagnostic, not prescriptive.

Watch the Professional domain specifically. Clients who dismiss self-care often score Consistently on Professional items (setting boundaries with workload, saying no to non-essential commitments) because they're in a period of professional intensity, not because those practices are actually present. Ask her to score for what's actually happening, not what she theoretically does. High consistency claimed in Spiritual/Meaning alongside Rarely in Physical and Emotional is a pattern worth exploring.

Start with which domain she identified as costing her the most. 'You named [domain]. What does that cost look like in a specific week?' Then move to the three most neglected practices. 'Of these three, which one, if restored, would have the most downstream effect on your leadership performance?' This question connects the self-care practice to the outcomes she cares about, making the one-to-start selection instrumental rather than indulgent.

A licensed therapist in private practice is doing strong work with clients but is experiencing secondary traumatic stress symptoms she describes as 'compassion fatigue but I don't want to call it that.' She has stopped doing most of the practices that historically sustained her. She knows exactly what she should be doing - the inventory isn't going to tell her anything she doesn't know - and has said so.

Acknowledge her expertise directly. 'You know this material better than most people who use this tool. The question isn't whether you know what to do - it's whether knowing is doing anything to change what's actually happening. The inventory here is about naming the current state, not discovering best practices.' The fact that she knows and isn't doing is the more interesting data than the inventory itself.

Watch for all-or-nothing scoring: practices rated Consistently until some trigger point (a particular client case, a personal loss, a schedule change) and then rated Rarely with no middle ground. That pattern suggests the practices were brittle - dependent on conditions that are now absent. Also watch the Social domain: isolated helper professionals often rate their client relationships as fulfilling their social needs, which masks a genuine personal social deficit.

Start by asking her what she expected the inventory to show versus what it actually showed. The gap between expectation and result is the coaching material. Then use the three most neglected practices not as a to-do list but as a mirror: 'Of these three, which one would your clients say they need you to restore first?' This reframes self-care through the professional lens she's more comfortable with, then bridges back to the personal.

A director-level product manager returned from parental leave three months ago to a team that's behind on a major launch. She's managing the professional pressure while also navigating infant care logistics. She describes feeling like she's failing at both. Her self-care practices have entirely ceased and she doesn't think it's possible to restore any of them in her current life structure.

Frame this as a triage tool, not a restoration plan. 'We're not trying to get you back to your pre-parental-leave baseline. We're trying to find one practice in one domain that has a meaningful effect on your capacity, that's actually possible in your current structure.' The domain question - which one is costing you the most - often helps clients in this situation name the most immediate lever rather than trying to address everything at once.

Watch for Rarely across all 27 items with no meaningful variation - that uniformity suggests the client has stopped tracking her own state entirely. The coaching value is not in identifying what to restore but in reestablishing the habit of self-observation. Also watch for high ratings in Emotional domain items that depend on the client being alone - journaling, reflection - which may be genuinely unavailable in a household with an infant.

Start with the 'one practice to start this week' she identified. 'Walk me through what that would actually look like on Tuesday.' Specificity of implementation matters more here than with other clients because abstract commitments to self-care are the ones that reliably fail. If she can't name a specific day and time, the practice needs to be made smaller until it fits into an identifiable slot.