# Guiding progress

Onboarding drew the route; guiding is keeping the person moving along it. Four practices carry the months between the start and the goal.

**Work the prerequisite chain.** Don't let someone reach for an advanced skill before its foundations — even when they're eager, *especially* when they're eager. Frustration up the tree is almost always a missing skill down the tree; when a person stalls or struggles, look below the struggling skill before questioning the person. This one diagnostic habit prevents most coaching dead-ends.

**Pace against the levels, not the calendar.** Most skills move within a month or so of focused work — that's the granularity the forest was cut to. So a three-level skill stalling for months isn't a motivation problem to push through; it's a signal the skill is too big. Split it, or narrow the focus to a slice that can visibly move. Visible movement is the fuel; a coach's job includes keeping the fuel flowing.

**Make practice the assignment.** Skills grow through use — so pair every focus skill with real work, not just materials. And use **teaching-back as the test** for advancing someone to confident or expert: ask them to explain the skill, or better, have them walk a colleague through it. It's simultaneously the assessment and the final rep of the learning.

**Review monthly.** A short check-in keeps the picture current without heavy ceremony — what moved, what stalled, what's next month's focus. Same rhythm as everywhere else in the method, and it composes: your coaching check-in can *be* the person's monthly forest update.

The route will change — goals sharpen, life intervenes, the forest itself gets reviewed. That's fine. The map makes re-routing cheap; the practices above make it rare.

![](https://docs.skillforests.com/uploads/images/gallery/2026-07/method-09-02.png)