Assess fit, values, and satisfaction in your current role with a structured, evidence-based audit to guide your next career move.
When you assigned percentages to enjoyment, in-between, and misery — what number surprised you most, and what's the main driver behind the largest slice?
A professional who has been in their role for one to three years is experiencing persistent dissatisfaction but cannot articulate whether the problem is the role itself, the organization, specific circumstances, or something about how they're showing up. They describe the work as 'not right' without being able to say what right would look like. The percentage audit forces a distribution they've been avoiding putting into numbers.
Position as a diagnostic before any conversation about next steps. 'Before we talk about whether to leave or stay or change something, I want to understand the actual distribution of your work experience. Not an impression — percentages. What portion of your work time is genuinely energizing, what's neutral, and what's draining?' The numerical format is useful for clients who can talk around an uncomfortable reality indefinitely; assigning percentages makes the picture concrete.
Watch the 'what contributes to misery' field for whether it contains structural items (role design, organizational dysfunction, reporting relationship) or situational ones (specific projects, recoverable dynamics). If the misery drivers are structural — things that are unlikely to change without a role change — the audit is surfacing something different from if the drivers are situational. The coaching implication is different: one points toward a decision, the other toward problem-solving within the current context.
Start with the numbers. 'Read me the percentages you wrote.' Then: 'When you see those numbers — what's your reaction?' The reaction often surfaces what the client already knows but hasn't said. Then move to the misery column: 'Read me the specific things in this column. How many of these are things you could change, and how many are features of this role?' The structural versus situational distinction often clarifies whether the coaching work is about this role or the decision about this role.
If the misery percentage exceeds 50% and the client has held this view consistently over multiple months — not a difficult week — the audit confirms a pattern rather than a moment. Severity: moderate. The question is not whether to trust the data but what the client has been waiting for before acting on what they already know. Explore what specifically is keeping them in place given what the numbers show.
A professional who is experienced and capable but worn down can describe in detail what drains them — the meetings, the politics, the administrative overhead. When asked what they enjoy, the list is sparse, abstract, or set in the past ('I used to love the strategy work'). The enjoyment field in the audit asks them to name what currently contributes to enjoyment, which surfaces whether there is still energizing content in the role.
Frame the enjoyment column as the diagnostic, not the misery column. 'Everyone who's in a hard patch can tell me what's draining them. What's harder to answer is what's still working. We're going to complete both columns, but I want to spend real time on the enjoyment field — because that's where we'll find out whether there's anything here worth protecting.' This reframe is useful for clients who arrive primed to catalog complaints.
Watch for whether the enjoyment field is populated with present-tense specifics or past-tense memories. A client who writes 'when I get to work on real strategy' but can't name a recent instance of that happening is describing absence rather than presence. The audit is supposed to reflect current distribution — if the enjoyment column requires reaching back months for examples, the current percentage for enjoyment is probably low even if the client hasn't admitted it.
After reviewing both columns, move to the action planning section. 'Look at your key observations. Do any of the actions you wrote address the enjoyment side — not just reducing misery, but actually increasing what energizes you?' Clients focused on reducing what's hard often skip the question of increasing what's good. The two are different: removing drain doesn't restore energy, and the actions in the third section should reflect that distinction.
If the enjoyment percentage is below 20% and the enjoyment column's content is exclusively past-tense or hypothetical, the client may be describing a role that no longer has meaningful energizing content for them. Severity: moderate. Explore what has changed since the role did have energizing content — whether that's a change in the work itself, the organization, or the client's needs. The direction of the change matters for what comes next.
A professional describes dissatisfaction indirectly — through vague references to being tired, feeling stuck, or not knowing what they want. When asked direct questions about their work experience, the answers are qualified and non-committal. They haven't named the problem because naming it would require deciding what to do about it. The audit's structured format gives them a less exposing way to document what they already know.
Position the format as a way to create distance from the assessment itself. 'You don't have to interpret this right now — just complete it as accurately as you can. Percentages, specific examples in both fields, and whatever actions come to mind. We'll look at it together.' The client who avoids direct examination often completes structured tools more honestly than they answer direct questions, because the tool doesn't feel like a confrontation.
Watch for discrepancy between the misery percentage and the specificity of the misery column. A client who writes 40% misery but cannot populate the 'what contributes to misery' field with anything specific may be protecting themselves from naming the actual source. That protection is the coaching issue. Ask what was too specific to write — sometimes clients are more forthcoming in conversation about what they couldn't put on the page.
After completing the audit, stay with the numbers for a moment before moving to the content. 'You wrote [X]% enjoyment, [Y]% misery. Just looking at those numbers — does this match how you'd describe your job to someone who asked you how work was going?' The gap between the numbers on the page and the social description the client gives their job is often where the avoidance lives. Then: 'What would need to change for the misery number to drop by 20 points?'
If the client is resistant to completing the percentage fields — finds reasons the categories don't apply, argues that it's more complicated than percentages can capture — the resistance to quantification may indicate that they already know what the numbers would show and don't want to see it written down. Severity: low. Acknowledge the limitation of the format and ask what percentage they'd assign anyway, even if it's a rough approximation. The number that comes out is usually informative.
Client has a vague sense of needing to take better care of themselves but hasn't defined what that means across different dimensions
LifeA client hasn't set goals across all areas of their life — just the loudest one
WellnessClient is performing in multiple life areas but feels an undefined sense of imbalance or emptiness
