Coaching Templates

The Energy Audit (or Enjoyment Audit) can be useful in coaching and for self-assessing your productivity and happiness with your work. This is a great tool for insuring against burnout. An Energy Audit can be useful in discovering the “highest and best use of your time”, and then thinking about what types of work you are doing that might be best for you to delegate to other people on your team. If gives/takes energy doesn’t resonate with you, you can think of this dimension as “enjoy” and “don’t enjoy”. 

To use this tool, you would first add a card with every type of task work that you do. Then, you will rank the task according to the two dimensions from -5 (takes a lot of energy, or really bad at) to 0 (neutral) to +5 (gives a lot of energy or really good at).  You might want to think about each dimension separately, placing each card initially along one axis, and then moving them into the right number of the other axis once you have all the cards placed on either the energy or capability axis.

We recommend less than 25% of your tasks should be within the “good at, don’t enjoy/no energy” quadrant and 0% should be in the “bad at, takes energy” quadrant. Meaning 75% or more should be in the gives energy half. By looking to delegation to align your graph with this ideal, you will be less likely to become burnt out at work.

Use the multi-select tool (hold down shift key and then click or draw a box around multiple cards) and the left card menu in order to delete the sample cards that are.    

Cardsmith Pro-tip: Use the Zoom Slider Bar to make the background image larger or smaller in order to fit your screen. 

This tool can be useful in coaching and consulting. In coaching, the future or desired state is where the client wants to be at some given point in time.  The current state represents where the client is now. The Gap area are obstacles that the client sees they will need to overcome and milestones they will need to accomplish on the way to their future desired state.  

This can also be used as a strategy tool for a team or organization to move from some current state to a more desired, future state.

In order to get the most of this tool, it is helpful to ask thought provoking questions:

• When assessing the current state:  “Where am I (or we)?”, “Who am I?”, “What do I do?”, “What assets and strengths do I have?”, “What do I have that we don’t want”, etc.   
• When designing the desired state:  “Who am I now? “, “What do I have?”, “How do I feel?”, “What am I doing?”.
• When brainstorming obstacles and milestones:  “What skills must I acquire?”, “Who do I need to help?”, “What limiting beliefs will I need to overcome?”. 

Use the multi-select tool (hold down shift key and then click or draw a box around multiple cards) and the left card menu in order to delete the sample cards that are.    

Cardsmith Pro-tip: Use the Zoom Slider Bar to make the background image larger or smaller in order to fit your screen. 

This is a useful matrix for gaining self-awareness and generating inputs to the goal-setting process. When we can clearly see what we want (or want more of), along with what we have and don’t have, patterns emerge. Then we can identify small and large changes that might be effective in improving our job, relationship, or any situation we’re dealing with (or simply our entire lives).

Choose an area to focus on from your life (such as your work situation), and then add items via cards to the matrix, positioning them along the spectrums of the X and Y axes.   

X-axis: This is the spectrum from Don’t Have (any) to Have (lots). Keep in mind that with some items, it may not be a clear “Have” or “Don’t Have.” For example, take money. You probably have some money. Do you want more?  How much more?  If you want lots more money, place the card far to the right. 

Y-axis:  This is the Don’t Want/Want spectrum. It starts on the left with Don’t Want (at all) to Want (somewhat, or badly) on the right.  

What to place in each zone of the matrix:

1. Want/Don’t Have. These are potential goals to work towards.
2. Want/Have. These are things to be grateful for and to protect. As you set goals, you may want to consider these items and make sure you don’t sacrifice something valuable that you already have in the pursuit of something new.
3. Don’t Want/Don’t Have. You can ignore these items for the most part. However, when considering new options or steps to take, you can look to make sure you don’t take on things that are in this category.
4. Don’t Want/Have. When you consider changes to make or steps to take, try to design them in a way that will eliminate some of these items. 
5. Zone of Ambivalence / Ambiguity. These are things that you may want sometimes want but not at other times. This can be subtle. You may be using internal “protection strategies” to avoid wanting something that you deem yourself unable to obtain or accomplish. Take money again as an example. You may want more money, but don’t believe you can get it. Therefore, you’re afraid of wanting it. So then you tell yourself things like, “Money is not important to me.” or “I can live on very little money.” The items in your Ambivalent/Ambiguous zone are worth thoughtful attention. Reflect on them to get more clarity about what you want and don’t want.

Viewing all your items in relationship to each other can reveal new insights and synergies. For example, you might see that you would be very happy in your current job if you could just make a small change. Sometimes, a small change can remove things you don’t want (which is good!) and bring in things you do want. 

So this is a great tool to use BEFORE using the path to a desired state template.  

Cardsmith Pro-tip: Use the Zoom Slider Bar to make the background image larger or smaller in order to fit your screen.    

A simple CRM to track leads, opportunities, speaking gigs and referral sources.

This board was provided by founding user Jerry Vieira from The QMP Group. Jerry is one of the few management consultants never wanting for work. It is because he works this board religiously to move forward with prospective clients and keep his referral network active.

The cards in this board have different fields appropriate to each column. Because Cardsmith currently has one “Default Card” per board, you should use the “Copy Card” function to create a new empty card with the relevant fields.

Communicate your unique process to new clients and as a Project Tracking tool during team coaching and consulting engagements.