These plans are for coaches, facilitators, or practitioners who are doing 1:1 work with someone using the UNGOVERNED framework. The three session types cover different situations: the first conversation, the ongoing practice, and the moment when something goes sideways.
The plans are structured but not rigid. Follow the time blocks loosely. If the person in front of you needs forty minutes on the scenario review and five minutes on the practice check-in, give them forty minutes on the scenario review. The structure exists so you do not have to think about logistics while you are paying attention to the person.
One principle runs through all three session types: the coach does not diagnose. The coach creates conditions where the person sees their own pattern. Your job is to ask the question that makes the pattern visible, then sit in the silence while they look at it. If you are talking more than forty percent of the time, you are doing too much.
Purpose: Establish the baseline, identify the primary friction point, select the first practice, and build a 30-day plan the person will actually do.
Pre-work (before the session): The person takes the Gateway Assessment on the website. They bring their results. If they have also read the book and done the progressive assessment, they bring their marks and reflections. The more data they arrive with, the richer the session. If they arrive with nothing, the session still works; you will build the baseline in the room.
Start here: "Tell me what you saw in your results. What felt accurate? What surprised you?"
Do not lead with your interpretation. Let them narrate their own results first. What they emphasize and what they skip tells you as much as the scores.
If their primary state is Governed, they will often minimize the results or frame them as worse than they are. Watch for: "Yeah, I know I need to speak up more" (they have heard this feedback before and absorbed it as a character flaw rather than a pattern to examine).
If their primary state is Performing, they will often push back on the results or explain why the scenarios did not capture their real behavior. Watch for: "The options did not really fit my situation" (they may be right, or they may be resisting the mirror).
If their results are Mixed or Unclear, start with the consistency pairs. Did they flag for contradictions? That is useful data. Say: "The assessment noticed some tension between how you see yourself in two areas. Let's look at that."
Questions to have ready:
The Gateway gives two friction points. The Deep Dive gives three. Your job is to help the person identify which one is costing them the most right now.
Ask: "Of the friction points in your results, which one do you feel in your body when I read it aloud?"
Read each friction point aloud. Watch their face and posture. The one that produces a physical response, a tightening, a shift, a look-away, is usually the one to start with, regardless of what the scoring algorithm prioritized.
If they say "all of them," say: "Pick the one that has cost you something specific in the last 30 days. Not the one that sounds worst. The one that has a recent receipt."
Name the friction point together in one sentence. Write it down. This becomes the anchor for the 30-day plan.
Use the prescription logic from the assessment architecture:
Explain the practice briefly. Do not over-teach. Say: "Here is the practice, here is what it asks you to do, here is how often. We will check in on how it is going next session."
If the person resists the practice, do not argue. Ask: "What about it feels wrong?" Their resistance is data. Sometimes the resistance means the practice is touching the right nerve. Sometimes it means you picked the wrong practice. Listen to which one it is.
Build the plan together. Do not hand them a plan; build it with their input so it fits their actual life.
Week 1: The primary practice, daily or as prescribed. Nothing else. Do not stack practices in the first week; compliance collapse is the number one reason 30-day plans fail.
Week 2: Continue primary practice. Add the carry question from the relevant chapter. The carry question costs nothing; it is one sentence they hold in their mind during the workday.
Week 3: Continue both. Add one counterplay practice if the person is ready. If they are still finding the innerwork practice difficult, do not add anything. Depth beats breadth.
Week 4: Continue everything. At the end of the week, they write a one-paragraph reflection: what has shifted, what has not, what surprised them.
Write the plan down on paper, not just in a shared document. People who hold a physical plan are more likely to look at it. Send a digital copy as backup.
Questions for building the plan:
Decide together how often you will meet. Options:
Set the first three sessions on the calendar before the initial session ends. If you leave it open ("Let's find a time"), it will not happen.
Close the session with: "Between now and our next conversation, the only thing I want you to focus on is the practice. Not the whole book. Not all eight chapters. The practice. If something happens at work that connects to what we talked about, write it down. Bring it."
Purpose: Check the practice, apply the framework to a real situation, adjust what needs adjusting, and set the question for next time.
Start here: "What happened with the practice this week?"
Do not ask "Did you do the practice?" That question invites a yes/no answer, and a yes/no answer hides the useful information. "What happened?" opens the conversation to whatever actually occurred, including not doing it.
If they did the practice, ask:
If they did not do the practice, do not shame them. Ask:
Sometimes the person did not do the prescribed practice but did something else, something that emerged organically from the reading or from a work situation. That counts. Ask about it.
What to listen for:
Ask: "What happened this week that connects to what we are working on?"
Let them describe a real situation from the past seven days. Do not interrupt the description. Let it land. Then:
Identify the pattern: "Which chapter does this sound like to you?" Let them place it. If they cannot, offer: "This sounds like it might be a Chapter [X] situation. Does that fit?"
Identify the state: "When you were in that moment, which state were you in? Governed, performing, or somewhere in between?"
Apply the counterplay: "If you had the tool from Chapter [X] available in that moment, what would you have done differently?" Let them draft the response out loud. Do not give them the answer. If they draft something that misses, ask: "What would happen if you said that? How would the room respond?" Let them self-correct.
Name what was underneath: "What emotion was driving the response you actually had?" This is where the innerwork connects to the counterplay. The tactic without the interior awareness is brittle. The awareness without the tactic is wasted. Both need to be present.
Questions to have ready:
Based on the practice check-in and the scenario review, decide together whether anything needs to change.
Possible adjustments:
Say what you are adjusting and why. Do not adjust silently. The person should understand the reasoning so they can self-adjust between sessions.
Give them one question to hold between now and the next session. The question should connect to what surfaced in the scenario review, not to the general chapter content. Make it specific to their situation.
Examples:
Close the session. Do not summarize. The carry question is the last thing they hear.
Purpose: Something happened. The person needs to process, find the counterplay, identify the interior work, and take one action. Thirty minutes. No wasted time.
A crisis session is not therapy. It is triage. The person has had an encounter, received an email, sat through a meeting, or made a decision that has activated their patterns at full volume. Your job is to help them separate what happened from what they are feeling about what happened, identify which tool applies, and leave the session with one action they can take today.
Say: "Tell me what happened. Facts first. What was said, what was done, who was there."
Hold them to facts. If they start interpreting ("She was clearly trying to undermine me"), gently redirect: "That might be true. For now, just tell me what she said and what she did."
Five minutes is not a lot of time. If they are still processing the emotional charge, let them have one minute of feeling, then bring them back: "I hear that. Now let's look at what actually happened so we can figure out what to do."
What to listen for: Is this a pattern they have seen before, or is this new? If it is a pattern, which chapter? If it is new, does it map to one of the eight scenarios, or is it actually outside the framework? Most situations map. Occasionally one does not, and that is okay; not everything is a power move.
Based on what happened, identify the relevant tool:
Help them draft the response. Out loud. In the session. Do not let them leave with a concept; let them leave with language.
If the situation calls for a reply-all, draft it together: "What are the facts you need in the thread? What is the tone? Read it back to me."
If the situation calls for a private conversation, rehearse it: "What are you going to say? Say it now, to me, the way you would say it to them."
If the situation does not call for any action (sometimes the counterplay is deliberate non-response), name that clearly: "The move here is to do nothing. Doing nothing is a choice, not a default. Here is what doing nothing accomplishes: [name it]. Here is what it costs: [name it]."
Now that the tactic is identified, look underneath.
Ask: "What emotion was running when this happened? Not what you think you should feel. What you actually felt."
Common answers and what they point to:
Do not try to resolve the emotion in a 30-minute session. Name it, connect it to the pattern, and give them the innerwork practice that addresses it:
Ask: "What is the first thing you are going to do when we hang up?"
Not the whole plan. The first action. Make it specific, time-bound, and small enough to do today.
Examples:
Confirm the action. Set the next check-in (even a text: "How did it go?").
Close the session: "You have the tool. You have the action. The feeling underneath it will move once the action lands. Go."