magnus919_agent-skills/life-coach/references/method-selection.md

Method Selection

Use a method only after listening and agreeing on the work. Relationship quality, goal and task agreement, client ownership, feedback, and adaptation have stronger support than loyalty to a branded sequence.

Evidence labels

Use these labels when explaining or documenting a method:

• Direct coaching evidence: tested in coaching populations relevant to the claim.
• Adjacent evidence: supported in therapy, health behavior, education, organizational psychology, or self-regulation, but not established as general life coaching.
• Practice standard: expected by professional bodies; not proof of isolated outcome efficacy.
• Common practice: widely taught or used but weakly validated.
• Restricted or excluded: clinical risk, weak evidence, rights limits, or inappropriate scope.

Never collapse these into a generic “evidence-based” label.

Selection test

Before adding a technique, ask:

1. What need is actually visible?
2. Would reflection alone be sufficient?
3. Is the topic within nonclinical coaching scope?
4. What direct or adjacent evidence supports this component?
5. Does it fit the person's preference, culture, language, disability, neurotype, emotional state, and context?
6. Can the agent use it faithfully rather than imitate its vocabulary?
7. Is it the least intrusive useful option?
8. Has the person consented?
9. How will fit and unwanted effects be checked?

Stop or adapt immediately if the method invalidates, pressures, confuses, escalates distress, or fails to help.

Optional components

Need	Optional component	Evidence position	Guardrail
Unclear outcome	Flexible contracting or GROW/CLEAR-like scaffold	Common practice; no clear superiority	Loop and backtrack; never march through stages
Ambivalence or external pressure	Motivational-interviewing-informed reflection and evocation	Strong adjacent behavior-change evidence; limited direct life-coaching evidence	Reflect reasons both to change and not to change; do not persuade covertly
Clear preferred future, blocked movement	Exception, resource, and next-sign questions	Promising but insufficient as an isolated coaching method	Do not bypass grief, injustice, danger, or needed analysis
Chosen goal with an execution gap	Mental contrast plus an if-then plan	Strong adjacent goal-attainment evidence	Check capability, opportunity, resources, and volatility first
Ordinary testable goal prediction	Low-risk evidence check or behavioral experiment	Moderate but incomplete coaching evidence	No symptom treatment, trauma work, reassurance loops, or clinical restructuring
Values conflict	Client-defined values clarification	Adjacent theory plus professional agency standards	Do not infer “true values,” prescribe individualism, or intensify into ACT therapy
Too many options	Criteria, tradeoffs, reversibility, or an information-gaining experiment	Decision-support practice	Avoid giant lists and covert ranking
Repeated noncompletion	Goal ownership, alliance, capability, opportunity, resource, and task-size review	Practice standards plus behavior framework	No shame, surveillance, or harder accountability by default
Stable repeated behavior	Cue, friction reduction, fallback, and context repetition	Adjacent habit evidence with wide timing variation	No universal day count, streak reset, or shame
Existing resources are overlooked	Story-grounded strengths reflection	Small, heterogeneous adjacent effects	No proprietary test, fixed strength identity, or positivity pressure

Method notes

MI-informed coaching

Use partnership, acceptance, compassion, accurate affirmations, open questions, reflections, and summaries. Evoke the person's own reasons and confidence. Reflect sustain talk as fully as change talk. Do not use “commitment language” as a conversion metric.

Mental contrasting and if-then planning

Describe the desired future, the best observable result, and the most relevant obstacle. Classify the obstacle as internal, environmental, interpersonal, or resource-based. Then define: “If [specific cue], I will [specific response],” plus a fallback and review point. Use original language rather than copying branded WOOP worksheets.

Cognitive-behavioral-coaching-informed experiments

Keep the target to an ordinary, goal-related prediction or behavior. State the prediction, design a low-risk observation or action, define what would count as evidence, and review the result. Stop before trauma, diagnosis, symptom treatment, obsessional reassurance, severe avoidance, or functional impairment.

Goal setting

Specificity helps only when the goal is chosen, meaningful, feasible, supported by ability and strategy, and paired with feedback. Distinguish outcome, behavior, learning, and system goals. “SMART” is a mnemonic, not a complete theory.

COM-B check

Before calling a gap motivational, examine:

• Capability: knowledge, skill, energy, executive capacity, physical or cognitive access.
• Opportunity: time, money, environment, childcare, tools, social permission, institutional power.
• Motivation: reflective desire, automatic response, competing rewards, fear, or habit.

Treat structural change, accommodation, and resource access as legitimate interventions.

Restricted and excluded methods

• Do not use NLP as a default evidence-based method.
• Do not infer or assign MBTI, Enneagram, DISC, or other personality types.
• Do not reproduce or score VIA, WAI, ORS/SRS, WHO-5, SWLS, clinical scales, or commercial inventories unless lawful use and qualified interpretation are independently established.
• Do not prescribe gratitude, affirmations, visualization, manifestation, “high vibration,” growth-mindset slogans, or positivity exercises as universal solutions.
• Do not reproduce proprietary Co-Active, Immunity to Change, WOOP, or certification curricula and worksheets.
• Do not use clinical ACT, CBT, exposure, trauma, attachment, or diagnostic techniques under a coaching label.

Read evidence and rights before making a method-efficacy or instrument-use claim.