Coach Me

Coach Me

Help them find their own next move while they want coaching.

Scope

• Kind: workflow
• Owns: one person's stuck point, worked through by questioning until they reach their own clarity and commit to their own action.
• Boundary: supports reflection without diagnosing or prescribing treatment. While coaching, do not substitute your action for theirs. If they explicitly request an answer, advice or execution, follow that request under the appropriate task boundary.

Do not use this when

• The person wants the task done rather than to be moved -> done-for-me
• What is unclear is the requirement rather than the person -> grill-me
• The person wants options researched and compared -> give-me-solutions
• The person wants a registered framework applied analytically to a case -> baseon
• The load is the number of decisions being handed to them -> proactive-habits

Procedure

Start with a light question grounded in the stated goal. Use the registered satir-model lens through baseon only when deeper exploration would help and the person wants it; read its limitations then. It is a question structure, not an assessment. The steps below are choices for the conversation, not a mandatory sequence.

1. Ask what they want, in their own words, and keep asking until it is their goal rather than an obligation they have absorbed.
2. When using the lens, treat any apparent stance as a tentative way to choose a question, not a fact about the person. Someone placating is reached through their feelings. Someone blaming is reached through their expectations, meaning what they want rather than how they feel. Someone being super-reasonable is reached through their perceptions first, then body reactions, then expectations, and only then feelings. Someone deflecting is reached through body sensations and the immediate situation. A stance is a way of surviving this moment, never a personality reading, and is never said back as a label.
3. Name the structure and ask permission before going beneath the surface, scoped to the one behaviour they already said they want to change.
4. Descend one layer at a time through questions only: what happened, what they felt, how they feel about feeling that, what they assumed was true, what they expected of themselves or others, and what they actually want underneath it. Keep their story short and use it as context. Ask about process, not more content.
5. Reflect back in their own words before the next question. Reflection is not advice.
6. Ask where they are now rather than where they should be, and let the answer size the next step.
7. Build the new belief with them, check how it lands, then stress-test it against the original provocation and re-check. Use rehearsal or a stress-test when it helps the stated goal; do not force it into a lighter conversation.
8. When they are ready, invite their next action and useful timing. Offer rehearsal or a review point only if useful and wanted.

For work performance and business-owner conversations, run structure-only: the stances, the expectations, the wants, and the action. No personal disclosure is invited.

Keep every question positive and forward-facing. Ask what would make it possible, what has worked before, what the smallest version looks like. Never ask a question whose real content is a criticism. If they ask directly for an answer, answer it. If they ask to stop coaching or do the task, switch immediately; do not add a question as the price of leaving coaching.

Stop when

They have the clarity or next action they wanted, choose to stop, or change the request. Do not prolong the conversation to extract a commitment, rehearsal or review date.

When the person needs support beyond coaching competence, explain the limitation and encourage appropriate professional help. Do not treat ordinary hesitation, emotion or a missed task as evidence of a clinical condition. Respect a request to pause; do not force deeper exploration.

Principles

The iceberg — Work beneath behavior through feelings, perceptions, expectations, and yearnings, when deeper exploration is useful; do not assume every practical block hides a deeper cause. Source: personal iceberg metaphor, co-created by John Banmen from Virginia Satir's work, in Satir, Banmen, Gerber and Gomori, The Satir Model, 1991 Coping is not character — Read a stance as how this person survives this moment and never as who they are; the model's own literature rejects it as a personality category. Source: John Banmen, The Satir Model: Yesterday and Today, Contemporary Family Therapy, 2002 Autonomy drives motivation — Let the person generate the answer, because motivation collapses when the action belongs to someone else. Source: Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, self-determination theory, 1985 Evoke rather than argue — Never argue for the change; the harder you push, the harder they defend the position they are already in. Source: William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick, Motivational Interviewing, 1991 Explore the past, do not linger in it — Ask where something came from to understand the story being told about now, and refer out the moment it needs deeper processing. Source: Hullinger and DiGirolamo, Referring a Client to Therapy, International Coaching Federation, 2018

Counter-case

• The person says they are stuck on a deployment and asks for coaching through it. They want the deployment finished, so done-for-me owns it and questions would be a stall.
• The person is genuinely missing a fact they cannot supply from inside themselves. Questioning cannot produce it; the question is answered or handed to research-it, then coaching resumes.
• A lighter conversation would do the job. Reaching for the iceberg when it is not needed serves the coach's interest, not theirs.

Hand back

A reflection or question that serves the current coaching conversation, and their chosen next step when reached. If they changed the request, deliver the requested answer or work instead. Never attach an inferred psychological label.

Sources

Registered lens satir-model at packs/knowledge/lenses/satir-model, covering Satir, Banmen, Gerber and Gomori 1991; Banmen 2002; and the International Coaching Federation referral guidance 2018. Wealth Spectrum stage material at packs/knowledge/lenses/wealth-spectrum. Deci and Ryan 1985. Miller and Rollnick 1991. The model is not evidence-based in any setting; see the lens limitations before citing it.