Who Am I?

A 40-year-old senior account executive at a B2B tech company has been in sales for fifteen years. His professional identity is highly developed — he knows his numbers, his methodology, his market. Asked about his values in the first coaching session, he described his compensation structure. Asked what motivates him beyond results, he paused for almost forty seconds. The Who Am I worksheet — values, why, goals — gives him a structured format to produce a single-page answer to a question he hasn't answered in decades.

Frame this as a document he doesn't currently have. 'Most people who are good at their jobs can tell you exactly what they do and how they do it. Very few have a clear, written answer to why — and fewer still have thought about how their values and their goals connect to that why. This sheet is a single page with three sections. It won't take long to fill out, but the answers are worth looking at together.' The risk with a high-performing sales professional is that he'll complete the values section with competency language ('integrity,' 'excellence,' 'results'). Name it: 'What I'm looking for in the values section isn't your professional values. I'm looking for what you care about as a person.',

Watch for his values list to be indistinguishable from a corporate competency framework — words like 'excellence,' 'accountability,' and 'integrity' that are culturally expected rather than personally revealing. The tell is whether any value he lists could embarrass him at work. The ones that couldn't are probably borrowed rather than owned. Also watch for his goals section to be entirely professional: revenue targets, promotion timelines, skill acquisition. If the personal domain is absent, that's not necessarily a problem — but it's a question worth asking about.

Start with the why section. 'Read me your why statement.' Then ask one question: 'Is that what you actually believe, or is it what you'd put on a resume?' If it's performative, invite him to try again with no audience. Then go to the values-goals connection: 'Look at the values you listed and the goals you listed. Where do they connect? Where do they pull in different directions?' The worksheet is a starting point for that tension, not an end in itself.

A 44-year-old former HR director left her role four years ago to care for an aging parent. The parent died eight months ago. She is preparing to return to work and came to coaching because she feels 'unmoored.' Her professional identity was strong before the leave. During four years of caregiving, her sense of who she is outside that role has shifted substantially. The Who Am I worksheet gives her a structured format for articulating who she is now — not who she was in 2021.

Frame this explicitly as a present-tense exercise. 'This worksheet asks three things: what you value, why you do what you do, and what you want. I want you to answer all three in present tense — not who you were before the leave, not who you expect to be once you're back at work, but who you actually are right now.' That instruction matters for this client because the temptation will be to reconstruct the pre-leave identity rather than assess the current one. She's changed. The worksheet should reflect that.

Watch for her goals section to be backward-looking — replicating her previous title, function, and industry without examining whether those still fit. Also watch for her values list to include caregiving-derived values (patience, presence, endurance) that she hasn't acknowledged as genuine parts of who she's become. If those show up, they're important — they represent the real person who did something hard for four years. Watch for whether she dismisses them as 'not professional' and whether that dismissal is worth questioning.

Start with the values section. 'Which of these values did you hold four years ago, and which ones emerged or deepened during the leave?' That question makes the change visible rather than treating the whole list as static. Then: 'Your why section — does this why still match the kind of work you're looking to return to, or has it shifted?' The mismatch between a pre-leave identity and a post-leave one is often where the real coaching work lives. Close with: 'What would it look like to go back to work in a way that takes all three sections of this sheet seriously — not just the goals?'

A 35-year-old product manager at a consumer tech company completed the Who Am I worksheet as homework. He listed 'presence' and 'deep connection' in his values section. His why described creating meaningful relationships with his team and family. His goals section listed: SVP by 38, international expansion experience, two board seats. He brought the completed sheet to session without noticing the tension. The worksheet has already done its job — the coaching work is making the incongruence visible.

He completed this between sessions, so the introduction here is about how to open with it rather than how to assign it. Start by acknowledging what he did. 'You gave all three sections real thought — I can see that in the specificity of the answers.' Then: 'Before we go through it, I want to ask you something. When you look at your values section and your goals section side by side, what do you notice?' Don't point out the tension yourself. Let him find it. If he doesn't, come back to it: 'Read me your values again. Now read me your 38-year-old goals. Where do they connect?'

Watch for him to immediately rationalize the incongruence ('I can have presence and still be an SVP'). That's the starting point for the coaching work, not evidence that it's resolved. Also watch for whether he can name a specific version of the SVP goal that would honor the values — or whether the rationalization is abstract. The difference matters. Also watch whether his tone changes when he reads the values section versus the goals section — energy, conviction, and specificity often differ between what we aspire to feel and what we've been trained to want.

Start with the tension directly but without accusation. 'Your values point one direction. Your goals point another. Both sections are yours — so there's no wrong answer here. But they're not obviously consistent. How do you think about that?' Then: 'Of the two — the values or the goals — which one do you think you'd regret not honoring at 50?' That question isn't about which is right. It's about what he actually holds as primary when the abstraction is stripped away.