What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from The Grief Recovery Handbook
Renata had coached the same client, a mid-career executive, for over a year when he mentioned almost in passing that his longtime business partner had bought him out after a bitter falling-out several months earlier. Renata acknowledged it briefly, said something like "these things happen, let's focus on your goals for next quarter," and moved the session back to his action plan without lingering on it any further. Session after session, his energy stayed noticeably flat whenever anything touched on partnership or trust, yet the topic never resurfaced directly, and neither of them brought it back up. She assumed his usual drive would return once he hit his next milestone, and kept redirecting toward goals instead of asking what that loss had actually left unresolved underneath the surface.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The Loss Behind the Stalled Client
A client's sudden plateau often traces back to an unnamed loss - a business partnership ending, a mentor relationship fading, or a professional identity shift - that never gets addressed because coaching conversations default so quickly and so consistently to forward-looking goals and next steps.
A coach keeps steering a stalled client toward new action steps, session after session, without ever asking directly what recent loss might be sitting underneath the stall.
When a client's energy flattens around a specific topic, pause the goal-setting and ask directly what happened around the time the pattern started.
When "Focus on the Goal" Becomes Avoidance
Coaching language like "let's not dwell on that, let's look forward" can function exactly like the comforting phrases the book warns against, teaching a client that their loss is an obstacle to bypass quickly rather than something genuinely worth pausing to examine together.
A coach redirects every mention of a painful ending back to action items, and the client learns to stop bringing up what's actually bothering them.
When a client raises a loss, let the conversation stay there for a few extra minutes before returning to strategy or next steps.
What a Client Never Said to Someone Who Mattered
Clients often carry incomplete business with someone from an earlier chapter - a mentor, a business partner, a former boss - words never exchanged before the professional relationship quietly ended.
A client avoids ever revisiting a valuable professional relationship that ended badly, assuming the moment for repair or closure has permanently passed.
Invite the client to write, privately, what they wish they had said to that person, without any expectation of ever sending it or bringing it up again.
Making Room for What Goals Alone Can't Resolve
Real progress for a client sometimes requires naming an unresolved loss directly, rather than trusting that enough achievement or momentum will quietly make the underlying feeling disappear on its own over time.
A coach's mandate to drive measurable progress can conflict with a client's need to slow down and name a loss. Staying entirely goal-focused can look more professional in the moment, yet skipping past an unresolved loss often stalls the very progress the coaching relationship exists to produce, quietly frustrating both the client and the coach without either naming why.
Name one thing, honestly
Which client's plateau have you been addressing with a new goal instead of a direct question about what they might be grieving?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Invite the client to write, privately, what they wish they had said to that person, without any expectation of ever sending it or bringing it up again.