THE GRAVITY SERIES
The forces pulling
on your leadership.
Burnout, perfectionism, people pleasing, the balance between doing it all yourself and absorbing everyone else's load — and the values underneath all of it. Five tools. Each one starts with a free check.
FIVE FORCES
Some of these forces are holding you down. Some of them used to hold you up.
Every leader carries gravity. Perfectionism that drove your early career becomes the standard nobody can meet. The instinct to take care of your people becomes the habit of carrying their weight. The independence that got you promoted becomes the isolation that caps your team. These forces aren't flaws — they're features that stopped fitting the altitude you're at now.
Center of Gravity
Oxygen Mask
Cabin Pressure
Autopilot
Fuel Gauge
Where your balance point sits. Are you carrying everything yourself, or absorbing everyone else's load? The answer shapes how your team functions — and how long you can sustain it.
What's actually driving your burnout. Not whether you're tired — where the exhaustion is structural and what pattern is underneath it.
Whether perfectionism is running you. The standards that made you successful don't always scale — and the cost compounds when they don't.
Whether people pleasing is costing more than you think. The instinct to say yes, absorb conflict, and keep everyone comfortable has a price.
What's actually fueling you, and what's running on empty. Not what you think should drive you — what your answers reveal does. The mix changes over time, and the source that carried you early can quietly run dry.
VALUES
What you're anchored to matters more than what's pulling on you.
Forces don't operate in a vacuum. Underneath every pattern — the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the burnout, the over-functioning — is a set of values driving the behavior. The Ballast surfaces those values. Not the ones you'd list in a job interview. The ones that actually run your operating system — including the shadow values you'd never put on a poster.
The Ballast — $39
Your personal values assessment. 63 questions across 10 sections — trade-offs, reactions, behavioral patterns, and a set of questions specifically designed to surface the values you operate from but wouldn't advertise. The AI maps your responses against 95 values in 10 clusters and writes a coaching-level analysis across 9 sections.
- Core 5 and Supporting 5 values identified with evidence from your specific answers
- Shadow values surfaced without judgment
- Tension pairs — where your values pull against each other
- Alignment score and 30-day practice
- Cross-tool read with The Climate (organizational values) if both taken
- Downloadable PDF report
ADD COACHING
Coached Center of Gravity — $499
Same assessment. Same full diagnostic. The difference is what happens after.
Your report includes an extended analysis with coaching preparation questions,
and you'll work through the results in a 45-minute one-on-one session with Don.
The assessment names the pattern.
The coaching session turns it into a plan that fits how you actually operate,
not a generic set of recommendations, but specific moves for your specific profile.
- Everything in the Center of Gravity
- 45-minute coaching session with Don
- Extended analysis + coaching prep questions
- Post-session action plan
Looking for assessments that focus on how you're wired?
The Pattern Series lives at thepartthatdoesntfit.com →