A client starts coaching full of energy, and a few weeks later tells you they know exactly what to do but keep slipping back into old habits. Marshall Goldsmith’s Wheel of Change is built for that moment. It asks four questions about any change: what to create, what to preserve, what to eliminate and what to accept.
Insight alone rarely changes behavior, so the wheel turns a vague goal like “be a better leader” into a short list of behaviors to start, protect, stop and live with. You will see how each quadrant works, how coaches run the model across sessions and where it falls short. To try it with a client this week, go straight to the four steps coaches follow in real sessions.
TL;DR
Marshall Goldsmith’s Wheel of Change is a behavior change tool built on two choices: whether something is positive or negative, and whether to change it or keep it. Those choices give four quadrants. Clients create the new behaviors they need, preserve the strengths that already work, eliminate the habits that hold them back and accept what they cannot change. It fits the point where a client knows the goal but their behavior is not changing. You map the client’s current behaviors, sort them into the quadrants and turn the one or two changes with the most effect into small experiments. It works best with clients who can look honestly at their own behavior, and it does not replace work on deeper emotional issues.
What Is Marshall Goldsmith’s Wheel of Change?
Most behavior change work stalls because clients struggle to turn insight into steady action, not because they lack insight. Many leadership and performance issues persist even after clients clearly see the behaviors holding them back. Marshall Goldsmith’s Wheel of Change is designed for that gap.
Goldsmith describes the model on his own site as a way to break change into two dimensions. One is positive versus negative, or what is working and what is not. The other is change versus keep, or what you want to change and what you want to maintain.
His article, which we read again in October 2026, also offers the model as a downloadable PDF. You can print it or redraw the four quadrants on a page for your session.
Rather than starting with goal-setting or motivation, the model treats change as a system of behaviors. It asks clients to look at how existing habits, triggers in their environment and the rewards around them interact. Mapped together, these elements show why certain behaviors persist and what has to shift for change to last.
1. How the Wheel Fits Goldsmith’s Philosophy
The Wheel of Change reflects ideas that run through Goldsmith’s work on leadership development. Across his coaching approach, he argues that lasting improvement rarely comes from insight alone. It needs consistent follow-through, supported by feedback and accountability.
Several ideas from his leadership coaching are closely tied to the wheel:
- Behavioral triggers matter: Goldsmith often points out how everyday triggers, such as situations, people or settings, set off automatic responses. The wheel helps clients see which behaviors these triggers reinforce and which need adjusting.
- Stakeholder feedback speeds up change: His coaching model often brings in feedback from colleagues, managers or team members. When clients map behaviors on the wheel, that outside view clarifies which habits to keep and which to drop.
- Change must be practical and visible: Goldsmith focuses on small, observable shifts rather than abstract development goals. The wheel turns insight into specific actions to create, preserve, eliminate and accept.
- Follow-through determines results: Goldsmith asks that a leader’s progress be judged by the people around them, not by the coach. The wheel supports this by giving clients a fixed set of questions to come back to as their behavior changes.
The model assumes the client believes new behavior is possible. If a client doubts they can change at all, start with work on a growth mindset in leadership and bring in the wheel once that belief is in place.
2. The Four Core Questions of the Wheel
The Wheel of Change asks clients four connected questions:
- What should the client create? New behaviors, routines or practices that move the client toward their desired outcomes.
- What should the client preserve? Strengths, habits or systems that already support performance and should not be disrupted.
- What should the client eliminate? Behaviors or patterns that undermine progress or create unnecessary friction.
- What should the client accept? Constraints, realities or outside conditions that cannot be changed but must be acknowledged.
The value of the framework lies in how it moves the conversation from big aspirations to the specific behaviors behind them. Clients do not just chase new goals. They examine the patterns that make change either last or fall apart.
In practice, many coaches introduce the wheel early in an engagement to spot behavior patterns. Others bring it in midway, when a client feels stuck despite apparent progress. Either way, it shows clients that changes across all four questions have to work together.
The Four Quadrants of the Wheel of Change
Each quadrant answers a different question about the same change, and the value comes from asking all four together. In practice, the model works because it exposes the whole system of behaviors around a change.
Many clients start coaching believing progress means adding something new, like a habit, a goal or a productivity system. Yet change rarely lasts through new behaviors alone. It comes from a balance of new practices, protected strengths, removed patterns and accepted limits.
When you take clients through all four quadrants together, the wheel becomes a lens for spotting patterns rather than a checklist. Here is how each quadrant shows up in coaching.
1. Creating and Introducing New Behaviors
The creating quadrant covers behaviors, habits or systems the client needs to introduce to move toward their goal. It is not about piling on more habits. The real work is finding the few shifts that change how a client works day to day.
The behaviors clients first suggest are often surface fixes. Your job is to help them find the pattern underneath the problem.
Example: Suppose a senior manager wants to become a stronger leader. Their first instinct might be to read more leadership books or attend workshops.
As you talk it through, the real issue turns out to be a lack of timely feedback to the team. The manager avoids difficult conversations, and team accountability slowly erodes.
Here, the creating quadrant might include behaviors such as:
- scheduling regular one-to-one feedback conversations
- addressing team tensions within 24 hours instead of postponing them
- asking more exploratory questions in team meetings
These behaviors change the leader’s communication patterns and gradually build team trust.
Coaches often explore this quadrant with questions such as:
- What new behaviors would make a real difference to your current situation?
- If someone watched your work for a week, what actions would show the change you want?
- Which small behavioral experiment could you start right away?
New behaviors are usually the most visible part of change, but they are rarely enough on their own.
2. Preserving What Already Works
Preservation is one of the most overlooked parts of change. Clients often assume progress means replacing their habits. Yet many of the behaviors that brought them this far are still valuable, and dropping them in the name of change can make performance worse.
The preserving quadrant helps clients name what must stay stable while other behaviors change.
Example: Imagine a startup founder whose company is growing past a small team. They may feel pressure to adopt new management styles and, in the process, risk losing the direct communication and quick decisions that made the company work.
Working through the preserving quadrant shows that while the founder may need to delegate more, they should keep strengths such as:
- transparent communication with team members
- rapid decision cycles
- a strong sense of ownership across the team
Instead of replacing these behaviors, the coaching work focuses on scaling them.
Helpful questions include:
- What current habits or strengths are already supporting your success?
- Which behaviors would you regret losing if they disappeared tomorrow?
- How can you protect these strengths while you make other changes?
This quadrant reminds clients that not everything needs to change.
3. Eliminating Counterproductive Patterns and Habits
New behaviors matter, but change often speeds up when clients stop doing something that undermines their progress. The eliminating quadrant identifies behaviors that create friction, drain energy or keep derailing performance.
These patterns are often deeply ingrained, and some were even rewarded earlier in the client’s career. Listing anti-goals, the outcomes a client wants to avoid, is a quick way to surface them, and you can use anti-goals with coaching clients as a warm-up for this quadrant.
Example: Take a high-performing executive who struggles to delegate. Earlier in their career, solving problems personally helped them stand out. With more responsibility, the same habit becomes a bottleneck for the whole team.
Instead of adding productivity strategies, the eliminating quadrant focuses on reducing behaviors such as:
- jumping in to solve every team problem
- reviewing work that could be delegated
- delaying decisions until personally comfortable
Removing these behaviors makes room for new leadership habits to take hold.
Useful coaching questions include:
- What behaviors keep creating friction in your work or relationships?
- Which habits use up energy without producing results?
- If you stopped doing one thing tomorrow, what would improve immediately?
For many clients, elimination does more to move them forward than any new habit.
4. Accepting and Working Within Constraints
The accepting quadrant is often the hardest for clients. Many spend a lot of energy trying to change circumstances outside their control, and that resistance can lead to frustration, burnout or stalled progress.
This quadrant asks clients to name the constraints they must acknowledge rather than solve. Acceptance is not passivity. It lets clients move their energy to the areas where change is possible.
Example: Picture a client in a large organization who struggles with internal politics or slow decision-making. Those dynamics are frustrating, but trying to overhaul them alone is unrealistic.
Instead of trying to change the whole system, coaching may shift to strategies such as:
- adapting communication styles to different stakeholders
- focusing influence on areas within the client’s direct control
- building alliances to work through organizational complexity
Once the client accepts the constraint, they are free to work well within it.
Questions often include:
- What parts of your situation are unlikely to change in the near future?
- How might accepting this reality reduce frustration or wasted effort?
- Where could your energy go instead for greater impact?
Acceptance often brings a clarity that resistance had been blocking.
The real strength of the wheel shows when clients look at all four quadrants together. A change effort that only creates new habits often fails for one of these reasons:
- existing strengths are abandoned
- counterproductive behaviors remain
- external constraints are ignored
When clients weigh what to create, preserve, eliminate and accept at the same time, they start to see change as a balanced system of behaviors rather than a single decision. That is what makes the wheel useful. It shows not only what clients want to change, but how their current patterns support or resist that change.
How Do Coaches Use the Wheel of Change?
Most coaches hold the model back at first and bring it in when insight alone stops moving a client forward. At that point, the conversation shifts from understanding the problem to changing the patterns that keep it going.
Many coaches introduce the wheel after several sessions of exploration, once recurring themes are visible. By then, the client usually sees that change needs more than one new habit. It means looking at how their behaviors, strengths and constraints interact.
1. Mapping the Client’s Current Behavioral System
Start by mapping how the client’s current behaviors fit together. Instead of asking, “What do you want to change?”, you invite a broader reflection:
- What behaviors are shaping your outcomes right now?
- Which habits keep your current situation in place?
- What routines or decisions repeat week after week?
This conversation helps clients see patterns that were invisible to them. A senior leader struggling with burnout might focus first on workload. The mapping can show a deeper pattern of saying yes to every new request and holding on to work they could delegate.
At this stage, the wheel is a way to organize what the client has noticed.
2. Distributing Behaviors Across the Four Quadrants
With the patterns on the table, take the client through each quadrant of the wheel with one prompt each:
- Create: which behaviors are missing today
- Preserve: which strengths the change could put at risk
- Eliminate: which habits keep pulling them back
- Accept: which limits will still be there a year from now
Rather than filling in the quadrants quickly, let the process unfold over time. Clients often name the obvious behaviors first and find deeper patterns as they keep reflecting.
For instance, a client who wants to improve team engagement might fill in the wheel like this:
- Create: regular one-to-one conversations with each team member
- Preserve: openness and transparency in team discussions
- Eliminate: interrupting people before they finish explaining an idea
- Accept: organizational processes that slow decisions down
This mapping turns a vague goal (“become a better leader”) into a clear set of behaviors to work on.
3. Identifying the Changes With the Highest Impact
The next step is deciding which changes will make the biggest difference. Not every item on the wheel needs action right away, so help the client pick one or two adjustments rather than trying to change everything at once.
For example, a client working on leadership presence may find that dropping constant multitasking in meetings matters more than adding a new productivity system. Choosing a few changes keeps the client out of the common trap of trying too much at once.
4. Turning Insight Into Behavioral Experiments
Finally, help the client turn what the wheel showed into behavioral experiments. Rather than committing to permanent change straight away, the client tests new behaviors in real situations, such as:
- trying a new delegation approach during the next project cycle
- asking team members for feedback after meetings
- pausing on purpose before responding in difficult conversations
This experimental approach keeps the process moving and lets the client refine it over time. For many coaches, the wheel becomes an ongoing reflection tool that grows with the engagement rather than a fixed diagram.
Common Mistakes When Using the Wheel of Change
The Wheel of Change looks straightforward, which is exactly why it gets used in ways that limit what it can do. Most stalled conversations come from using the model too quickly or too lightly, not from a flaw in the model.
These are the common mistakes to avoid:
1. Treating the Wheel as a Simple Exercise
A frequent pitfall is turning the model into a quick worksheet. Clients fill in the four quadrants fast without looking at the patterns that drive their behavior. That can produce interesting notes, but it rarely leads to lasting change, because the value is in the reflection, not the diagram.
2. Overemphasizing the “Create” Quadrant
Many clients go straight to the creating quadrant, assuming progress means more habits, goals or systems. Yet the biggest gains often come from the eliminating quadrant. Dropping one counterproductive behavior, such as avoiding difficult conversations or micromanaging the team, can do more than several new routines.
Some clients lean naturally toward building new things and others toward keeping what works. Knowing whether your client is a creator or maintainer tells you which quadrant they are likely to rush toward and which they will skip.
3. Ignoring the Role of Acceptance
Another mistake is skipping the accepting quadrant. Clients can spend enormous energy on circumstances that are unlikely to shift, such as organizational constraints, market conditions or other people’s behavior.
Helping clients name what they must accept moves their attention to the areas they can influence. For many, acceptance is the turning point that reduces frustration and restores momentum.
4. Treating Change as a One-Time Decision
The wheel is often treated as a one-time reflection, but behavior change rarely follows a straight line. New habits reveal new obstacles, eliminated behaviors come back under pressure and accepted realities can shift. Revisit the wheel every few sessions to track how the client’s patterns are changing.
5. Neglecting the Client’s Existing Strengths
Some coaching conversations focus so hard on problems that they overlook the strengths that brought the client this far. The preserving quadrant reminds both of you that change does not mean throwing out what already works. The most effective approach builds on those strengths while adjusting the behaviors that limit them.
Key Limitations of the Wheel of Change Model
Like most coaching frameworks, the Wheel of Change works best in the right context. It gives a clear structure for reflecting on behaviors that help or hinder progress, but it is not built for every coaching challenge. Knowing its limits helps you choose when to use it.
1. It Assumes a Degree of Self-Awareness
The wheel works best when clients can reflect on their habits and patterns with some honesty. A client who still struggles to describe the challenge, or who is not ready to look at their own part in it, may find the framework hard to use. In those cases, start with exploratory conversations and reflective questions before you introduce the model.
2. It Focuses on Behavior, Not Deeper Psychological Work
The framework is good at surfacing habits, leadership behaviors and decision patterns. It does not address deeper emotional drivers such as trauma, identity conflicts or long-standing psychological barriers. When strong emotions get in the way of reflection, an emotional audit can help the client steady themselves first, and deeper issues may need a referral to a therapist.
3. The Quadrants Can Oversimplify Complex Situations
Real change rarely fits neatly into four boxes. A habit that once helped a client succeed might now be partly useful and partly limiting, so it belongs in two quadrants at once. Treat the wheel as a guiding lens rather than a strict sorting system, and let clients revisit where things belong as the coaching goes on.
4. Clients May Focus Only on the “Create” Quadrant
Clients tend to gravitate toward adding new habits and strategies. When the conversation stays on creating, the balance that gives the model its value is lost. Walk through all four quadrants, so that new behaviors come with realistic expectations and with the removal of the patterns that would undo them.
5. It Requires Follow-Through Beyond the Exercise
Completing the wheel does not produce change by itself. Without ongoing reflection, accountability and experiments with new behaviors, its insights stay on paper.
None of these limits reduces the model’s value. Knowing them lets you use the wheel as one tool among several for reflection and behavior change.
Wheel of Change vs. Other Behavior Change Frameworks
Most coaches use more than one framework in an engagement, because some models clarify direction, some shift habits and some build accountability. The Wheel of Change is most useful when the challenge is changing the behavior behind performance rather than setting goals. Comparing it with other models shows when to reach for it.
1. Wheel of Change vs. GROW Model
The GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) is one of the most widely used coaching frameworks. It structures conversations around goal-setting and action planning.
| Framework | Primary focus | When it works best |
|---|---|---|
| GROW | Clarifying goals and identifying action steps | Early-stage coaching conversations |
| Wheel of Change | Evaluating behavior patterns that support or block progress | When a client understands the goal but struggles to change behavior |
In practice, coaches often use GROW to set direction and the Wheel of Change to reshape the habits that decide whether those goals are reached. Clear goal setting in coaching comes first, and the wheel then shows which behaviors stand between the client and the goal.
2. Wheel of Change vs. Prochaska’s Stages of Change
The Stages of Change model describes how ready a person is to change, moving through phases such as precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. Prochaska and DiClemente set out the model in a 1983 study of smokers who changed on their own.
| Framework | Primary focus | When it works best |
|---|---|---|
| Stages of Change | Assessing readiness for change | Coaching clients who are ambivalent or resistant |
| Wheel of Change | Identifying specific behaviors to adjust | Clients already motivated to change but unsure how |
The Wheel of Change is most useful once motivation exists, when clients are ready to work out which behaviors to create, preserve, eliminate or accept.
3. Wheel of Change vs. Habit Loop Models
Habit frameworks from behavioral psychology describe how habits form through a loop of cue, routine and reward.
| Framework | Primary focus | When it works best |
|---|---|---|
| Habit Loop Models | Understanding automatic behavior patterns | Coaching around daily routines or personal productivity |
| Wheel of Change | Evaluating broader behavior patterns | Leadership development and professional behavior change |
Habit models explain why a behavior repeats. The Wheel of Change helps decide which behaviors should change within a wider leadership or performance context.
4. Wheel of Change vs. Feedforward Coaching
Goldsmith’s own feedforward approach focuses on future improvement rather than past mistakes. Instead of asking what went wrong, the coach invites others to suggest ideas for doing better.
| Framework | Primary focus | When it works best |
|---|---|---|
| Feedforward | Generating forward-looking improvement ideas | Leadership development and performance feedback |
| Wheel of Change | Structuring behavioral reflection | Pinpointing what must change in a leader’s habits |
Many coaches combine the two. Feedforward generates ideas for improvement, and the wheel sorts those ideas into specific behavioral shifts.
5. Wheel of Change vs. Stakeholder-Centered Coaching
Stakeholder-centered coaching, another Goldsmith approach, uses regular feedback from colleagues and stakeholders to track behavior change over time.
| Framework | Primary focus | When it works best |
|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder-Centered Coaching | Accountability through external feedback | Leadership coaching in organizational environments |
| Wheel of Change | Mapping behavioral adjustments needed for change | Clarifying what behaviors stakeholders want to see shift |
Stakeholder feedback often tells you which behaviors belong in each quadrant, which makes the two approaches a natural pair.
6. When the Wheel of Change Is Most Useful
Among behavior change frameworks, the Wheel of Change is especially useful when:
- a client already understands their goals but struggles to change daily behavior
- leadership habits are reinforced by existing systems or triggers
- you want to look at helpful and limiting behaviors at the same time
- change means balancing new behaviors with existing strengths
Rather than replacing other frameworks, the wheel sits inside a wider coaching toolkit as the step that sorts behavior. It shows clients how their habits, strengths, constraints and triggers interact.
How Simply.Coach Supports the Wheel of Change
Using the Wheel of Change usually means more than one reflective exercise. You revisit it across sessions, track new behaviors, check which patterns have gone and watch progress over time. When those insights sit in notebooks, documents and separate tools, it gets hard to see how the client’s behavior is shifting.
Simply.Coach keeps session notes, goals, action steps and reflections for each client in one place, so you can follow behavior change across the whole engagement. These features support structured frameworks like the wheel:
- Client workspaces: keep a dedicated space for each client where session notes, reflections and progress updates are recorded and reviewed over time.
- Goal and progress tracking: set goals that match the wheel, such as habits to create or patterns to eliminate, and follow progress through periodic check-ins.
- Action plans: turn what the wheel shows into concrete actions, so clients follow through on the changes named in sessions.
- Forms and reflection tools: collect structured reflections or self-assessments from clients between sessions to spot shifts in behavior and mindset.
- Integrated scheduling: manage session booking and reminders while keeping each engagement organized in one place.
- Session and engagement management: run one-to-one programs, group engagements or leadership development programs with every record connected.
With session insights, goals and progress tracking connected, the wheel stays part of the coaching between sessions instead of a page you fill in once.
Conclusion
The Wheel of Change gives you a practical way to help clients see behavior change as a whole. Asking what to create, preserve, eliminate and accept moves them past short-term motivation to the patterns that shape long-term progress.
Reach for it when a client knows the goal but keeps sliding back. Treat the quadrants as a conversation you return to, not a form you fill in once. When the goal is still unclear or emotions are running high, start with another tool and bring the wheel in afterward.
Key Takeaways
- Work all four quadrants. A plan that only adds habits tends to stall, so pair each new behavior with a strength to keep, a habit to drop and a limit to accept.
- Wait for repeat patterns. Bring the wheel in when the same themes keep coming back, not in the first session.
- Look for what to stop. Removing one counterproductive behavior often moves a client further than adding several new routines.
- Do not skip acceptance. Naming what cannot change frees energy for the areas a client can influence.
- Keep the list short. A wheel with ten changes on it goes nowhere, so let the client work on the top one or two first.
- Revisit it regularly. Patterns shift as habits change, so come back to the wheel every few sessions.
- Know when to use another model. Use GROW when the goal is unclear and the stages of change when motivation is the problem.
If your clients’ wheel insights end up scattered across notes and emails, the work between sessions is easy to lose. Simply.Coach is client management software for coaches that lets you turn each quadrant into goals and actions, run progress check-ins and gather stakeholder feedback over time.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the Wheel of Change?
The Wheel of Change is a behavior change tool from coach Marshall Goldsmith. It sorts any change along two lines, positive or negative and change or keep, which gives four questions: what to create, what to preserve, what to eliminate and what to accept.
Is the Wheel of Change the same as the Prochaska and DiClemente model?
No. Prochaska and DiClemente's model, usually called the stages of change, describes how ready a person is to change, from precontemplation to maintenance. Goldsmith's Wheel of Change looks at the behaviors themselves and asks which to introduce, keep, remove or accept.
How is the Wheel of Change used in mental health or personal development?
In personal development, the wheel helps people look at their routines, coping habits and surroundings, then decide what to build, keep, drop or accept. It is a coaching tool for behavior change, not a treatment, so anyone with a mental health condition should also work with a qualified professional.
Can the Wheel of Change be used in motivational interviewing?
It is not part of motivational interviewing, but the two work well together. Motivational interviewing strengthens a person's own motivation and commitment to change. The Wheel of Change is more useful once that motivation exists, because it turns the wish to change into specific behaviors.
Are there templates available for the Wheel of Change?
Yes. Goldsmith's own article on the Wheel of Change offers a downloadable PDF, and many coaches simply draw the four quadrants on a page. Label the boxes create, preserve, eliminate and accept, then write the client's behaviors into each one during the session.
What are the four C's of change in the Wheel of Change?
The Wheel of Change does not use four C's. Its four parts are create, preserve, eliminate and accept, which cover new behaviors to build, strengths to keep, habits to remove and limits to acknowledge. Together they help a client approach change in a balanced, realistic way.
How does the Wheel of Change apply in organizational or leadership coaching?
Leaders use it to see how their daily behavior shapes team dynamics, decisions and performance. They name the leadership habits to strengthen, the behaviors that hold the team back and the organizational realities to accept. Feedback from colleagues often shows which behaviors belong in each quadrant.
What is the wheel of change in addiction?
People asking about the wheel of change in addiction usually mean the stages of change, also called the transtheoretical model. It describes how ready a person is to change and is best known in addiction treatment. Goldsmith's Wheel of Change is a separate tool for everyday behavior change.