The 47-Item Checklist
Elena set one goal in session one: "speak up in the leadership team meeting within three months." After six sessions she has still not spoken in that meeting, but she has built a 47-item preparation checklist and rehearsed scripts for 14 possible objections. She says: "I think I need a few more sessions before I actually do it - can we extend to 18?" You also learn that last week, in a small team meeting, she used a colleague's phrase, "I'd like to build on that," and it worked. Your contract is for 10 sessions, and today is session seven.
1. What do you notice in the picture Elena has presented, and how do you reflect it without shaming her?
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Notice the ratio: enormous preparation, almost no exposure. The checklist is not evidence of progress toward the goal; it is a very sophisticated way of staying away from it. The extension request fits the same pattern.
Reflect it descriptively, not as an accusation. "You've built 47 things to prepare and rehearsed 14 objections. None of that has required you to say anything in that room. I'm wondering what the preparation is protecting you from." Then stop and let her answer.
Shame would make her defend the checklist and the coaching would stall. Curiosity gives her room to say the thing she may already suspect: as long as she is preparing, she is not failing. Name the pattern without making it a character flaw - it is a strategy that worked somewhere, and it has a cost. Also surface the success she did not mention, because she is likely to discount it.
2. How do you use the small team-meeting success?
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Treat it as the most important data in the session, not a footnote. It is the only evidence that the goal behaviour is available to her at all.
Ask for the detail: what exactly she said, what she expected to happen, what actually happened, what she noticed in her body afterwards. People who discount a win often cannot describe it, which is why the specifics matter. "You expected X. What happened instead?"
Then test how transferable it is. The gap is between a small team meeting and the leadership team, and the gap is real - different stakes, different audience, different silence. Rather than telling her the gap is imaginary, ask her what is different about the two rooms, and whether the phrase would survive the difference.
Finally, link it to a next experiment, not a next plan. The learning is that she can speak and survive it. The question is what the smallest version of that in the leadership meeting would be.
3. How do you handle the request to extend from 10 sessions to 18?
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Do not answer yes or no on the spot, and do not treat the request as purely administrative. Ask what the extra eight sessions would buy: "If we had eight more sessions, what would be different that isn't different now?" Her answer will tell you whether the request is commitment or avoidance.
Be transparent about your own view without making the decision for her: "My honest concern is that more sessions might give the preparation more room rather than less." Then offer a structure that makes the question testable - for example, use sessions eight to ten as planned, with one specified real-world action before session nine. Decide about extension after that, with evidence.
If she genuinely wants more coaching on a different goal, that is legitimate and should be discussed openly. What you should not do is quietly drift past session ten or extend to avoid the discomfort of a conversation about avoidance. Either way, put the revised agreement in writing with a clear review point.