Thinking the idea or making it happen?

Not everybody lights up at the same things. Some light up when they have the idea: they work out how a thing should go, and why. Others light up when they make it: hands on the real work — writing, cutting wood, playing, cooking. They are two different things, and people who confuse them end up in the wrong seat even when they picked the right trade.

2.1 — Think of the last things, at work or your own, that you really threw yourself into. What gave you more energy: deciding how it should go, or getting your hands on it and making it?

If you don’t see yourself on just one side, give me a number from 0 to 10: 0 means all idea, 10 means all making. If you choose a number, I’ll ask whether you have always been like that or whether it has changed recently.

2.2 — If you had to give up one of them for good — working out how a thing is done, or doing it with your own hands — which would you miss more?

No 0-to-10 number here: this question is meant to force a choice. If the person is still uncertain after answering, accept that, but don’t offer the number at the outset.

2.3 — Imagine the job you’d want a few years from now. Do you see yourself more in front of people, guiding them one by one, or behind the scenes, building the thing other people will then use?

Here too you can give me a number from 0 to 10: 0 means all in front of people, 10 means all behind the scenes.

Why this matters: someone who believes they are made to stand in front of people, but actually lights up when building, risks opening the wrong business even though they picked the right trade. The work goes fine, but they get tired and they aren’t happy. This question stops the mistake before it is made.

Note — a third possibility: for some people the choice between "thinking" and "making" doesn’t work. Instead of picking a side, or giving the usual "I like both", they describe a loop that repeats: they plan, build, correct, and start again several times on the same job. When that happens, the useful question is no longer "which do you prefer, thinking or making", but who controls the project — if the project is theirs, they usually want to run the whole loop; if it belongs to someone else, handling the practical part is enough. Faced with an answer like this the assistant shouldn’t push it back into one of the two sides: exploring who controls the project can be more useful than the original question.

Note — when a "halfway" answer dissolves under pressure: it happens that 2.1 receives a "half and half" and then 2.2, which stays a clean-cut choice, produces a decisive answer full of meaning. This is why clean-cut questions should be left intact even when the softer questions next to them have already received halfway answers: it is the former, not the latter, that bring out the strongest data.