CoachlingAction Plan
Five focus areas, your character strengths, and two reference tools to practise between sessions.
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Five focus areas, your character strengths, and two reference tools to practise between sessions.
Following up on our session. Five areas, the strengths from your VIA profile that fit each one, and two reference tools at the end for the defusion and relaxation exercises we talked about.
Do not try to do all of it. Pick a few things and practise them.
The short version. Detail on each one further on.
| Area | Start with | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Business development | Write the service list. One page, six services maximum. | Perseverance |
| 2. Values and strengths at work | Pick three activities a week and name the strength you will apply. | Judgment |
| 3. Daily gratitude | Three lines by hand, at a fixed moment in the day. | Self-Regulation |
| 4. Rumination and worry | Two mindful walks, and one full relaxation run while calm. | Perseverance |
| 5. Business strategy | Put a date in the diary with your partners. | Fairness |
Your top five are the ones that come most naturally and tend to show up under pressure. Reach for these first.
Finishing what you start, even when there are obstacles.
Discipline and control over impulses and emotions.
Careful about choices; not taking undue risks.
Thinking things through from all sides and weighing evidence fairly.
Genuine and without pretence; taking responsibility.
Self-Regulation, Prudence and Judgment sitting together at the top means you are careful and considered. It is also the combination that, in overdrive, produces rumination: scanning for risk, re-examining the evidence, and trying to hold it all in place. The aim in area four is not to dial these down, it is to have a way to step out of the loop.
Gratitude at nineteen does not mean you are ungrateful. It means noticing the good does not happen automatically, which is why the daily practice is worth doing deliberately.
A deliberate and repeatable approach rather than an opportunistic one.
Write the service list. One page, plain language, no more than six services. Nothing else here can be built until that exists.
The activities we identified in your current work. Pick three each week and decide which strength you will apply, and how.
Add your five values from the card sort, then read them against the three activities above. The question is what the value would have you do differently in that activity.
Select three activities, choose one strength for each, and write a single sentence on how you will apply it. Fifteen minutes.
A brief daily practice of acknowledging things that have gone well. A few minutes. A journal, a running note, or an email to yourself.
There is some evidence that physically writing things down helps with remembering and recalling them, so a handwritten journal may be worth trying first.
Nominate the notebook and the exact moment in the day. Then write three lines tonight.
Four strategies, doing different jobs. Defusion changes your relationship with the thought. Mindful walking builds the attention skill underneath it. Relaxation gives you something physical to do when stress is acute.
Two mindful walks, and one run through the full relaxation while calm. Do not wait until you are stressed to try it for the first time.
Worth working through a structured approach as a team, so the three of you are aligned on where you are heading and what you will focus on.
The Operating Model Canvas gives you a template to work through methodically as a team. If it would help, we could turn one of our sessions into a two-hour session with the three of you and I could facilitate you through it.
Put a date in the diary with your partners. The structure can be worked out later.
Defusion means stepping back and seeing a thought as a thought, rather than as a fact or an instruction. You are not arguing with it or trying to replace it.
Start when you are calm. Run one exercise a day for a week on a mildly annoying thought, then start using them when the worry actually arrives. If the thought goes away, treat that as a bonus. The test is whether you can turn your attention back to something that matters.
Put the phrase in front of the thought, then add a second layer. Say each version slowly and notice the change in distance.
"I will not win the contract."Recurring worries arrive in the same few shapes. Give each one a title. When it turns up, name it: "Ah, the Not Enough Work story again."
Naming it does not dismiss it. It reminds you that you have heard this one before.
Say the thought out loud in a cartoon voice, or sing it to a tune such as Happy Birthday.
It feels absurd, which is the point. The content does not change, but its authority does.
Take the one word carrying the sting, such as "failing". Say it out loud, quickly, for thirty seconds.
It usually turns into a strange noise within about twenty seconds. It is a sound you have attached meaning to.
Picture a slow stream with leaves on it. Place each thought on a leaf and let it float past. Do not push it along or hold it back.
Noticing you have been carried off with a thought is the practice, not a failure at it. Five minutes is enough.
Your mind generates worry because it is trying to protect you. Acknowledge it: "Thanks, mind. I can see you are trying to keep me safe."
This one suits your profile. Prudence and Judgment are doing their job, just not at a useful hour.
Put the thought on an imaginary screen as plain text. Change the font to something ridiculous. Change the colour. Make it bounce, or run as a news ticker.
The words do not change. You are showing yourself you can hold them at arm's length.
Ask what the worry would look like as an object. Colour, size, shape, temperature, speed. Place it on the desk and look at it.
Then, without removing it, turn to the next useful thing. Let it sit there while you work.
Treat the loop as a radio playing in the background. You cannot switch it off, but you can stop leaning in to catch every word.
Say: "Radio Doom and Gloom is on again." Then carry on, with the radio still playing.
Do not ask whether the thought is true. Your Judgment will debate that for an hour. Ask instead: "If I follow this thought right now, does it take me towards what matters?"
If the answer is no, you do not need to resolve it. You only need to stop following it.
Press the button and practise whichever one comes up.
Start with the long version and cut the time down stage by stage, until you can release in the twenty seconds before you walk into a meeting.
The tensing is there to teach you what tension feels like in each part of the body, and to make the release obvious by contrast. Once you know that feeling, you can skip the tensing and go straight to release. Move up a stage when the current one reliably drops your tension, usually after five to ten goes. If a stage stops working, drop back one for a few sessions.
Sixteen muscle groups, tense and release. About fifteen minutes, once a day, seated or lying down.
Same method, groups combined. About eight minutes. You should be recognising your habitual tension spots.
Four large regions. About five minutes. The version most people settle into as a regular practice.
No tensing. Go to each region and let go, using the feeling you have learnt. About three minutes.
Pair release with a cue word on the out breath, such as "loose". About a minute. Repeat it often enough that the word starts to do the work.
Twenty to thirty seconds, eyes open, before a difficult call. Use it five or six times a day in ordinary moments so it is there in hard ones.
Pick your current stage and press start. The timer runs the tense and release phases for you.
A suggestion rather than a prescription. It adds up to under two hours a week.
| When | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | Three gratitude lines, by hand, at a fixed moment | 3 min |
| Daily | One rapid release, once you reach Stage 5 or 6 | 30 sec |
| Twice weekly | Mindful walk, attention directed outward | 20 to 30 min |
| Twice weekly | Relaxation at your current stage | 3 to 15 min |
| Weekly | Business development block, set day and time | 45 min |
| Weekly | Pick three activities and name the strength to apply | 15 min |
| Monthly | Review: what held, what did not, what to change | 20 min |
Write the service list, and start the relaxation ladder while things are calm. Nothing else in the business development area can happen until the first exists, and the second has to be built in advance.