Coaching practices for Dating a Former Employee
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Dating a Former Employee, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep getting dazzled by how brilliant or charming someone is and signing up to work or partner with them, and then the exact same painful pattern I’ve been burned by before
- Things have gone cool and stiff with someone and we’re both just frozen, neither willing to make the first move or have the awkward talk
- I keep responding to who my partner was a couple of years ago instead of who they are now
- I’m about to walk into a new job and a new neighborhood, and I’m already bracing for it to be awkward, rehearsing how they probably won’t take to me
- There are people I used to be close with who’ve moved into whole new worlds since, and I’d love to reach out
Practices that may help
- Apply anti-goals to relationships and collaborators
Naming the relational patterns you refuse to accept prevents you from optimising for the wrong things in who you work or live with.
Anti-Goals: Defining Success by What You Refuse to Accept - Use a small ask to repair a strained relationship
In a cool or conflicted relationship, asking for a small favor can reset the dynamic more effectively than doing one.
The Ben Franklin Effect, Made Practical - Map your partner's current inner world
Know your partner's present worries, stresses, and joys -- not just who they were when you met.
Love Maps: Knowing Your Partner's Inner World - Use the anticipation of interaction to create liking before meeting
Knowing you will interact with someone in the future makes you evaluate them more positively before it happens.
The Propinquity Effect (Leon Festinger) - Reactivate dormant ties
Reach out to people you’ve lost touch with — they carry bridging value and low social cost.
The Strength of Weak Ties - Repair a poor response
When you respond badly to good news, circle back and give the engaged response you missed.
Active-Constructive Responding, Made Practical - Repair a damaged leader-follower relationship deliberately
Take active steps to reset a deteriorated relationship, rather than allowing avoidance to compound the damage.
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical - Design for serendipitous encounters
Put yourself in environments where unexpected, cross-cluster contact is structurally likely.
The Strength of Weak Ties - Cultivating mystery: becoming interesting to yourself first
Invest in your own aliveness — your pursuits, pleasures, and personhood — not primarily to attract your partner, but because your vitality is the resource desire draws from.
Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships - Rekindling after a drift: returning to aliveness
Recognize a drift in erotic connection as normal — and name it as the beginning of a renewal, not a failure.
Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships
Related concerns
- Asking A Romantic Interest About Her Relationship Status
Replace generic check-ins with questions that open a window into your partner's inner life.
Ask open-ended map-building questions
- Asking An Ex Girlfriend Out To Coffee Now That Shes Married And Has A Child
In a cool or conflicted relationship, asking for a small favor can reset the dynamic more effectively than doing one.
Use a small ask to repair a strained relationship
- As A Customer How To Deal With An Unresponsive Company Representative Without Poisoning The Relationship
State your disagreement clearly, give your reasoning, and then commit to the decision — without sacrificing either honesty or loyalty.
Disagree with your manager constructively
- Getting Back In Touch With An Ex Colleague
Reach out to people you’ve lost touch with — they carry bridging value and low social cost.
Reactivate dormant ties
- How Can I Approach My Friend About Why Hes Ignoring Me
In a cool or conflicted relationship, asking for a small favor can reset the dynamic more effectively than doing one.
- How To Casually Invite A Particular Colleague For An Afterwork
Put yourself in environments where unexpected, cross-cluster contact is structurally likely.
Design for serendipitous encounters
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.