Values vs. Actions Audit

A VP of customer success at a B2B software company has a stated priority around team health and sustainable pace. She talks about it in leadership meetings and includes it in her team's operating principles. Her team's voluntary turnover rate is 35% over two years. Coaching has surfaced that she is operating from values she endorses conceptually but has never tested against her actual behavior patterns. The 8-domain audit will make the gap visible.

Position this as a behavioral inventory, not a self-assessment. 'You've told me what you believe about team well-being. This tool looks at where those beliefs are showing up as actions — and where they aren't.' The resistance here is often defensive: leaders who've built an identity around caring for their teams find the behavioral gap uncomfortable to examine. Name the discomfort early: 'This isn't an indictment. It's a map. The goal is to see which domains have actions that match your values and which ones are aspirational.'

If the Relationships or Work-Life Balance domains receive high importance ratings but the concrete actions column is thin, the client is valuing something she's not behaviorally invested in. Watch for a pattern where she can easily generate actions for domains tied to performance (productivity, career growth) but stalls on domains tied to care (health, relationships). That asymmetry is diagnostic. Also watch for the reverse — clients who generate long action lists for low-importance domains as a way of demonstrating busyness.

Start with the highest-importance domains that have the fewest actions. 'You rated Relationships as most important. What three things in the last week reflected that?' If she struggles to answer specifically, the gap is behavioral. Then: 'Which of these eight domains would your team describe as your strongest?' That introduces the external perspective without requiring 360 data. The question that opens things: 'If someone watched your week without knowing your stated values, what would they conclude you actually prioritize?'

A 44-year-old corporate attorney became a coaching client after a significant work win — made partner after eleven years. He started coaching because he felt he 'should want more' but doesn't know what. Three sessions in, he's mentioned twice that his wife thinks he works too much, which he's dismissed each time as her not understanding his work. The 8-domain audit will give them a shared frame to examine what he's actually allocating to his life outside work.

Frame this as a life inventory rather than a relationship tool. 'You've said you don't know what you want next. Before we go there, it's useful to see the full picture of how your life is distributed right now.' Don't signal the relationship dimension before he discovers it through the tool. The resistance this scenario invites is intellectual minimization — he may want to assess his work and career domains thoughtfully and skim through the personal domains quickly. If that happens, slow it down: 'Take the same amount of time on each domain.'

If the Relationships domain receives a high importance rating but the concrete actions column has generic entries ('dinner on Sundays,' 'anniversary trip'), the gap between stated priority and behavioral investment is present. Watch for the emotional tone shift when he reaches the relationship domain — if he becomes noticeably briefer or more dismissive, that's a signal. Also watch for his Spirituality or Purpose domains — what he writes there often reveals what he's missing that work hasn't been able to provide.

Start with the domains with the richest action evidence — likely Work/Career — and let him speak to those. Then move to the domains with the thinnest evidence. 'You rated Relationships as highly important. Walk me through what that looks like in a typical week.' Don't editorialize on the gap. Let him see it. The question that opens things up: 'If your wife filled out this sheet using her observations of your week, which domains would she rate your actions higher than you did? Lower?'

A 50-year-old regional director in healthcare operations had a minor cardiac event eight months ago. His doctor told him to reduce stress. His wife gave him an ultimatum. He took early retirement talks seriously for the first time. He's in coaching because he genuinely wants to change but doesn't know who he is outside work — after 25 years of total work identification, the non-work domains of his life are nearly empty. He knows he needs to build something but doesn't know where to start.

This scenario requires a different introduction than most. He already knows the problem — the gap between work and everything else. What he needs is a concrete map that shows him where specifically there is something to build versus nothing. 'This tool looks at eight areas of life. For some people the surprise is how unbalanced things are. I suspect for you the question is more specific — which of the other domains has any traction right now, and which ones are starting from scratch.' Avoid framing this as a discovery tool — he's past discovery. Position it as a triage instrument.

Watch for him to have highly specific action evidence for Work/Career and thin-to-empty evidence for everything else. That's expected. The diagnostic signal is in which non-work domains have any momentum at all — even weak — versus which have nothing. If Fun/Recreation, Health, and Relationships all have sparse actions but the Health domain has some structure (doctor visits, prescribed activity), that's the entry point. If all non-work domains are equally empty, the rebuild is more foundational than career coaching alone can support.

Start with the domains that have any actions — even small ones. 'Walk me through everything in the Health domain.' Build from there. Then: 'Which of the domains with the least in it right now has ever mattered to you — at any point in your life?' That question connects him to a version of himself that existed before work took over and creates a possible bridge. Don't try to populate all eight domains in one session. Pick two domains to build from.