Every opening begins with one question: what does this client want to work on today? In the Topic stage, you partner with the client to name the focus of the session. They arrive carrying a full plate. Your move is to help them choose what goes on the plate first. The focus is theirs to name, and your question is what opens the door to it.

Meet Sabrina at the buffet

Sabrina sits down with everything at once: her team, a big presentation, an overflowing inbox, and barely any sleep. She calls it her all you can talk buffet. Coach Kendall meets the fullness with a single question: “Of everything on the buffet, what feels most important to place on the plate first?” One question, and the choosing begins.

Watch for who names the topic

From a full plate, Sabrina chose what mattered most. Kendall opened the space, and Sabrina set the topic.

The question in your hands

A Topic question hands the client the pen. It sounds like:

“Of everything you’ve named, what feels most important to focus on today?”
“Where would you most like to put our time?”
“Which of these, if we gave it your full attention, would matter most?”

Each one invites Sabrina to choose. The words stay hers, the focus stays hers, and the session begins on her ground.

What partnering sounds like

At the MCC level, this move has a clear sound. The coach partners with the client to name the focus together, builds the question from the client’s own words, and supports the client’s full ownership of where the session goes. When a new thread begins to surface, the coach notices it and partners with the client to clarify the direction they want. The agreement is co-created, start to finish, in the client’s language.

Deepening the practice

As you grow in this move, you hold the topic lightly. You reflect the whole plate back to Sabrina in her own words, team, presentation, inbox, rest, then open the choice and let her land. The more you practice, the more you stay curious as she chooses, open to the focus deepening or shifting as she hears herself think out loud. You come to treat the topic as a living agreement, and you keep partnering with it as it grows.

The real room

Real clients bring the whole plate at once, and that fullness is the doorway. Naming everything out loud, team and presentation and inbox and sleep, is often exactly what lets the most important one rise to the top. Welcome the buffet. Inside all of it is the one thing the client most wants to choose, and your question is what helps it surface.

Your practice: take the chair beside Kendall

You just watched Coach Kendall meet Sabrina’s buffet with one clean question. Now slide into the chair next to her and try the move yourself. Sabrina is still here with her full plate. Ask one Topic question and hear how she answers. Notice what your wording opens in her. When your question hands her the pen, watch her begin to choose.

Live Practice

Coach Sabrina: Name the Focus

Ask as many questions as feels natural. When you feel complete, move on to the next lesson.

A Note from Ken

When you hand the client the pen, something shifts. Now the session has their DNA on it. Let that first question come from curiosity. Sit beside them and listen to the whole buffet: the team, the presentation, the inbox, the tiredness, and whatever is sitting underneath. Somewhere in all of that, something carries more weight. Listen there. Then ask the question that helps the client hear it too. When they name the focus in their own words, the work has already begun.

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