Other career coaches and counselors consult with me about how to improve their practice. A common concern they raise is, “What should I do about clients who don’t do their homework? This is what I tell them and is what I do with my clients.
Prevention
Make sure the client is both willing and able to do the assignment. At the end of the session, ask, “So what homework assignment do you want to do?” That helps ensure that the client is motivated to do it and that it's appropriate in length and difficulty. Generally, you want to accept their self-assigned homework. That said, if you have a concern, tactfully raise it, for example, “That sounds challenging. Think you’ll be able to do it, with or without help?” Or, "I’m wondering whether you think it might be more useful to do X, perhaps in addition to what you propose? What do you think?”
Once the homework is agreed on, if I have some doubt as to whether the client will do it, I ask, “Pretend we’re in Vegas. What would be the odds you'll do the homework: even money? 10 to 1 in favor? 10 to 1 against?’ If the client answers anything less than 10:1 in favor, I ask, “How could we make it 10:1 in favor?” Common client responses are, “Put it in my calendar for a specific time,” “Get my spouse to nag me about it” or some such. If the client doesn't come up with an answer that leads them to say, “Yes, it’s 10:1. I’ll do it,” I suggest changing the assignment, I break it down into baby steps, or ask, “Where do you see getting stuck? Then, of course, I try to help.
When they don’t do their homework
First, I try to diagnose why they didn't do their homework. When they say, “I’m sorry but I didn’t do my homework,” I say something like, “That could occur for a number of reasons: you simply were too busy, it was too hard, you ran into a roadblock, or the homework ended up not feeling as worthwhile as when you said you wanted to do it. Any of those operative with you?”
If the client says s/he was busy, I'll typically say something like, “Were there less important things you found time for? I'd follow up with, "Why do you think you did that?"
If the client says the homework was difficult, we troubleshoot that.
If s/he got stuck with a particular part of the homework, we try to solve that.
If s/he says that the homework didn’t feel worth doing, we analyze why. Perhaps the more the client thought about the career direction s/he was to explore, the less interested s/he was in it. Or perhaps, deep down, s/he doesn’t want to work. If I assess the client’s not having done homework is mainly laziness or not really wanting to find a job, I tend to be firm, saying something like, “If you’re not going to do your homework, it may not be a good use of your time and money and my time as a career coach to keep working with you. What do you think?” Especially if the client hasn't done the agreed-on homework twice or three times in a row, I might be even tougher and say, “For your sake and mine, you need to do the agreed-on homework. If you don’t, we’re going to discontinue our sessions.” Sometimes, niceness works, sometimes accountability with teeth.
The takeaway
A client’s success heavily depends on doing homework between sessions. Too many coaches, counselors, and therapists are too nice when a client doesn't. They too readily let the client off the hook, for example, “I understand. You must have been busy. Let’s proceed and hopefully you’ll do the next assignment.” Such a response makes the counselor and client more comfy but doesn’t necessarily help the client move forward. It’s usually wiser to take the time at the end of a session to be sure the homework assignment is appropriate and if the client fails to do it, to troubleshoot and then consciously decide whether the wise response is support or tough love.
