EFT Model: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For EFT Model, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
About 2 minutes
List your models with a real example each
Write down the models you use to understand yourself and others, each with one real example. The goal is to see where each one breaks down.
List up to three models you rely on, each with an example from your life.
Practices that may help
- Constantly distinguish the map from the territory
A model is a simplification — know precisely where yours breaks down.
Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach - Maintain a personal model catalog with examples
Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach - The Big Five Personality Model
The Big Five (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism — OCEAN) is the most empirically validated personality framework in academic psychology. Knowing your trait profile is useful not as a fixed identity but as a statistical map of your behavioral tendencies under different conditions — especially as a diagnostic for where effort and environmental design can close the gap between your natural defaults and your goals. - The Fogg Behavior Model, Made Practical
BJ Fogg’s model states that behavior happens when three elements converge at the same moment: sufficient motivation, sufficient ability, and a prompt. If a behavior isn’t happening, one of these three is the bottleneck — and diagnosing which one tells you exactly what to change. The model is practitioner-developed with strong theoretical grounding; large-scale RCT evidence is limited but the framework is widely used in product design and behavior change programs. - Elaboration Likelihood Model, Made Practical
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) holds that persuasion travels one of two routes: the central route, where people carefully evaluate arguments and change their minds durably, and the peripheral route, where people use mental shortcuts (source attractiveness, social proof) and shift only temporarily. Which route dominates depends on motivation and cognitive capacity in the moment. The model is one of the most replicated frameworks in social psychology. - Diagnose which element — motivation, ability, or prompt — is the bottleneck
When a behavior isn’t happening, ask: Is the person motivated enough? Can they do it? Are they being prompted?
The Fogg Behavior Model, Made Practical - The Dreyfus Model: Five Stages from Novice to Expert
Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus proposed five stages of skill acquisition — novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert — that describe a shift from rule-following toward intuitive situational understanding. The model is widely used in professional education and nursing pedagogy but is primarily observational and theoretical rather than derived from controlled experiments. - Forgiveness: The REACH Model
Everett Worthington’s REACH model walks forgiveness through five steps — Recall the hurt, Empathize with the offender, give an Altruistic gift of forgiveness, Commit to it, and Hold on when the resentment returns. It targets emotional forgiveness (replacing bitterness with more neutral or positive feeling), not excusing the act, and its structured workbooks have been tested in controlled trials and meta-analyzed with real, if modest, effects. - Build the flexibility to switch styles
The skill the model actually demands is style range — most leaders overuse one default.
Situational Leadership, Made Practical - Apply several models to the same problem at once
When models from different fields point to the same answer, confidence rises; when they conflict, you learn something important.
Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I trust my favorite framework so completely that I apply it everywhere without checking, and lately it’s been quietly steering me wrong
- I read all these brilliant thinking tools and nod along, and then the moment I’m actually facing a hard problem not one of them comes to mind
- I keep failing at the same thing and I’ve decided I’m just lazy or weak
- I’m stuck on a decision and I’ve only really looked at it one way, and I’m not sure how much to trust that one read
Related concerns
- B Model
COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behavior) is a diagnostic framework developed by Michie and colleagues that maps the three conditions any behavior requires: you must be able to do it, have the opportunity to do it, and want to do it. Research supporting COM-B as a systematic intervention framework is largely expert-consensus and observational rather than RCT; its main value is stopping you from applying the wrong lever.
- How What Why Model
Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
Maintain a personal model catalog with examples
- What How Why Model
Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
- Abcde Model
COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behavior) is a diagnostic framework developed by Michie and colleagues that maps the three conditions any behavior requires: you must be able to do it, have the opportunity to do it, and want to do it. Research supporting COM-B as a systematic intervention framework is largely expert-consensus and observational rather than RCT; its main value is stopping you from applying the wrong lever.
- Comb Model In Research
COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behavior) is a diagnostic framework developed by Michie and colleagues that maps the three conditions any behavior requires: you must be able to do it, have the opportunity to do it, and want to do it. Research supporting COM-B as a systematic intervention framework is largely expert-consensus and observational rather than RCT; its main value is stopping you from applying the wrong lever.
- Combe Model
A model is a simplification — know precisely where yours breaks down.
Constantly distinguish the map from the territory
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.