---

name: coaching-diagnosis
description: "Diagnose the repeating pattern beneath a leader's stated problem, find the belief driving it, and design a coaching engagement around the shift that changes behavior."

/coaching-diagnosis

Executives come to coaching with a presenting problem: "I need to delegate better," "I'm not being strategic enough," "I keep losing my best people." These are real problems — but they're symptoms. A leader who can't delegate usually doesn't have a time management problem; they have a belief that other people can't be trusted to do work at the required standard, rooted in an early-career experience where they were right. Coach the symptom and the pattern persists. Coach the belief and behavior changes across every domain where it shows up — delegation, promotion decisions, crisis response, relationship with the board. This skill builds the diagnostic frame before the engagement starts.

Presenting Issue vs the Real Pattern

• State the presenting issue as the leader named it: "I need to get better at delegation."
• Now ask: where else does this pattern appear? Does it show up in how they handle direct reports' mistakes? In how they respond to board questions? In how they describe their own team's capabilities? Name 3 other contexts where the same pattern is visible.
• Write the real pattern in behavioral terms: "Reclaims tasks when they're going slower than expected, even when no deadline is at risk." This is observable — not a character judgment.
• The difference between the presenting issue and the real pattern is where the coaching work lives.

Situational Triggers

• What specific situations activate the pattern? Be precise — not "high-pressure situations" but "when a direct report is silent in a meeting where the leader expected them to speak up" or "when a deliverable is two days late and the client hasn't complained."
• Name 3-5 triggering situations. Triggers are the entry points for intervention — if the leader can catch the trigger, they can interrupt the pattern.
• Ask: what would have to be true about the situation for the pattern NOT to activate? That inversion reveals what the trigger is actually measuring.

The Story the Leader Tells Themselves

• What does the leader say to themselves — internally, in the moment — to justify the pattern? Write it in first person: "If I don't step in now, it will be too late to fix it."
• This internal narrative is not random. It was formed in a real situation where it was probably correct. Name the likely origin: "Learned in an early role where a missed deadline cost the team a contract."
• The story is not a flaw — it was once a feature. The coaching work is not to eliminate it but to update it for a different context.

The Belief or Fear Driving It

• Beneath the story is a belief. Write it in its starkest form: "If I let this fail, I will be seen as the person who let it fail — not the person who trusted their team."
• Or a fear: "If I give up control here and it goes wrong, I won't be able to recover."
• One belief. Name it precisely. This is the pivot of the entire engagement — everything else orbits it.
• Ask: has this belief ever been tested and found wrong? If yes, what happened to the belief when the evidence arrived?

The One Shift That Cascades

• What is the minimal belief shift that, if it held, would change behavior across all the contexts where the pattern appears?
• Write the new belief: "My team is capable of recovering from failures that I would previously have prevented." This is the destination — not a value statement, a belief the leader can test and accumulate evidence for.
• Name the first evidence-gathering experiment: a situation the leader can deliberately allow to unfold, observe the outcome, and update the belief. Small, low-stakes, real.

3-Month Milestones

• Month 1: What behavior is the leader practicing? Name the specific experiment and how success is defined.
• Month 2: What do they notice? What evidence is accumulating for or against the new belief?
• Month 3: What has changed in the pattern? What would a direct report or peer say is different? Name the observable signal.
• Each milestone is behavioral and observable — not "leader feels more confident" but "leader completed three handoffs without reclaiming the task, and all three met quality bar."

Rules

1. The presenting issue is the starting point, not the destination. Don't design an engagement around it.
2. The real pattern is described in observable behavior — what you could see on video, not what you'd infer about character.
3. The belief is stated in first person, as the leader would think it.
4. The shift must be testable. A belief the leader can't gather evidence for or against is a value statement, not a coaching target.
5. Milestones are behavioral. Internal states are not milestones.
6. Bring this formulation to the leader collaboratively — they must recognize themselves in it or the map is wrong.

The output is a diagnostic frame the coach can use to design sessions, track progress, and explain to the leader why the work you're doing together is different from advice.