The Four Tendencies: The Framework That Made Me a Better Practitioner, Coach and Seller

You can have the smartest nutrition protocol in the world and still watch clients stall, ghost, or “fall off” between sessions. That’s not a meal plan problem. It’s a psychology problem, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

We’re diving into Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies and how they explain the way people respond to expectations: outer expectations from other people and inner expectations we place on ourselves. I walk you through each tendency with a practical coaching lens so you can spot what’s really happening when a client seems “unmotivated” or “resistant.” Upholders often need permission to be imperfect so life doesn’t break their momentum. Questioners need the why, the research, and the mechanism so they can commit without feeling sold. Rebels need freedom, options, and identity-based language instead of rigid rules. Obligers, the most common group, need external accountability and community support or they’ll struggle even when they want the goal badly.

Then we take it beyond client results and into business: how your own tendency affects consistency, content creation, and self-set deadlines, plus how to use this framework in an ethical way to improve sales and marketing. You’ll leave with clearer client communication, better coaching systems, and a simple way to close the behavior gap that keeps great nutrition practices from becoming truly great.

If this helps you, subscribe, share it with a fellow nutritionist, and leave a quick review so more coaches can stop guessing and start coaching the whole person.

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Transcript

Why This Tool Changes Coaching

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, welcome back. I'm Lee McSwan, and this is one of the episodes that I've been wanting to record since I decided to do a solo series. This tool that I'm going to share with you today is wildly simple yet insanely beneficial to your nutrition practice. And it was single-handedly the tool that shaped the way that I practiced. And one of the ways that my clients got the best results, I noticed a huge uptick in several things that I'm going to share with you that led to better client retention, more money, and more success for my clients. Okay, so here's what it is.

Inner Versus Outer Expectations

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Specifically, how they respond to outer expectations, which are the things that other people ask of them, and inner expectations, these are the things that we ask of ourselves. And the combination of how someone handles those two types of expectations determines almost everything about how they form habits, follow through on commitments, and ultimately succeed or fail at the things that they're trying to change or implement. So she identified four tendencies, and I want to walk you through each one clearly so you have a real working understanding before we talk about how to actually

Upholders Need Permission To Bend

SPEAKER_00 1:52

use this. So the first tendency is called the upholder. Upholders meet both inner and outer expectations. They do what they say they're going to do and they follow protocols, they set goals and they chase them without needing someone to check in on them. You give an upholder a meal plan and she's going to follow it. Dream client, right? Yeah. We love our upholders. They're relatively straightforward clients on the surface, but they can be a little bit rigid, which is going to happen when life disrupts them. Whether that's the plan, they struggle, or something unexpected comes into their life. They need permission to be imperfect. They need permission from you as a nutrition coach to be imperfect. And you really have to learn how to build that in in order to work with them because flexibility isn't natural for them. And if you don't address it, it becomes a breaking point for them. So really fascinating upholder. Once you understand the upholder, you're like, this is a dream person to work with. Just give them some tools for when life life. And they are basically off to the races.

Questioners Need The Why

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Now, the second tendency is the questioner. Questionners will meet an expectation, but only if it makes sense to them first. They need the why. They will research, they will push back, they will ask you to justify your recommendations. And if you if and if your answer doesn't hold up, they're simply not doing it. One of the quickest ways that you can determine if somebody is a questioner before you run them through the assessment is by telling them to do this assessment, and they're gonna be like, Well, why? You you pretty much can guarantee you've got a questioner on your hands. Um, so with the questioner, some things to be aware of is that they can seem like they're resistant or things may look like resistance if you don't know what you're dealing with. It's not just it's a questioner being a questioner. You have to give them rationale, you have to share the research, you have to make them feel like a participant in their own protocols, and they become of, and when you do that effectively, they become some of your most engaged and committed clients because they understand the why. Okay,

Rebels Choose Freedom Over Rules

SPEAKER_00 4:33

so the third tendency is the rebel. Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner. They don't want to be told what to do, and they don't even want to be told by their own past self what to do. They operate from choice and they also have to identify with the thing that they're looking to change, and they have to be able to feel like they are doing it based on freedom, not because somebody's forcing them to, but because it's a free will choice that they're willingly going into and agreeing to. You cannot hand a rebel a rigid meal plan and expect compliance. It's gonna be the most frustrating thing for you because you frame everything, but when you frame everything as a choice, you connect behavior to the identity that they are after. It's not this idea of you should eat this, it's more that reframe of, but you're someone who cares about how you feel. So here's what tends to work for people like you. Rebels really like options. You let them lead, you make them feel like they're in the driver's seat because for a rebel, for a rebel, that's the only seat they'll actually drive from. My tendency is the rebel, and I can tell you that it is very challenging to be a rebel. We want to make changes, but if we feel like there's rules attached to it, even if we attach those rules ourselves, our natural tendency is to rebel against it. Very, very, very difficult tendency to work with. Okay,

Why Obligers Struggle Alone

SPEAKER_00 6:31

and then there's the obliger. This is where I want to spend some real time because this tendency changed every single thing for me as a practitioner. And I think it's the most important one for nutritionists to understand. It's also the most common tendency. So it's really important that we have a good deep understanding of our obligers because they make up, I think Gretchen Rubin said one time in a podcast that I want to say 70%, that's what's coming to mind, but definitely more than half the population fall into the obliger tendency. And obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle enormously with meeting inner expectations. They will show up for everyone else. This is going to be very typical. If you work specifically with women, you'll notice that you'll start being able to identify an obliger before they ever take the assessment. They will not let other people down. But when it comes to doing something purely for themselves without external accountability, everything unravels. Not because they don't want to do it, but it's that they want it more than they can articulate something. It's not because they don't want it, they want it more than they can actually articulate at times, but wanting something for yourself is an inner expectation, and obligers are wired to respond to outer expectations. They are also and because they are statistically the largest tendency group, they are the ones that that will naturally require a bit more of your time in terms of accountability. They will also do really well in group settings. So if you do group coaching or you hold any sort of group program or mastermind, your obligers naturally will be attracted to that. But if you're not building external accountability structures into how you support your obligers, you are unintentionally setting them up to fail, not through any fault of theirs, but it's just literally how they're built. So let me bring this to life because the framework alone is interesting, but the story is where it really clicks. And this is when I realized the power of understanding the four tendencies.

The Client Story That Clicked

SPEAKER_00 8:59

So back in the day, after a couple of years of being out of nutrition school. So back in the day when I was freshly out of nutrition school, I was working in a corporate setting supporting people who were predominantly looking to lose weight and do so with nutrition and personal training. I had a client who was not following through between our sessions. She was showing up, she was engaged anytime we had a one-on-one. She was genuinely interested and strongly desired weight loss, and she really wanted to build better habits around her meal plan, but she wasn't, and it's not like she was making excuses or being difficult, but we just could not get the needle to move for her. And I have to be honest with you about my blind spot here because it's the whole point of the story. As I said, I'm a rebel, and as a rebel, I had been operating under this assumption that because she was paying me, because she had made this external commitment, invested in herself, shown up consistently, that she was already bought in, that the investment, but I didn't realize that the investment itself wasn't enough. That between our sessions, she was walking around connected to her goal, envisioning herself as someone who had already built these habits because that's how I operate, that's the rebel logic. So I was projecting my tendency onto a woman who was wired entirely different from me. She was an obliger, and once I understood that, I was able to actually support her. She did not need more information from me, she did not need a better meal plan or even a meal plan. She didn't need a better meal plan. She did not even need for me to change the existing meal plan. What she needed, she needed people around her goal. So I connected her with her personal trainer, and the three of us started functioning more like a support team rather than separate appointments on her calendar. She had check-ins coming from multiple directions. She had people who knew what she was working toward. Essentially, she had outer accountability that felt like less pressure and like a support team, a community. And that's what changed her weight loss plan. Everything unfolded as it needed to. She was able to follow through. She got her results. She felt supported instead of quietly failing between sessions and feeling shame about it that she never even told me or her trainer about. All I had to do was check in with her. Hey, you stick into your meal plan? Yes, I am. Thank you so much. Her trainer, we would like tag team the messaging so that it wasn't just all falling on one person. But because she had those checkpoints, she felt like she could keep going. Like somebody was there for her who hadn't been there before. Again, my tendency was that she wants this, she's paid for this, she's good to go. I've given her everything that she needs. Why isn't she having results? She needed accountability from external sources. So this became the first assessment I sent to every new client from that point forward before we had an initial consult. Before I even sat down with somebody, I wanted to know what their tendency was because it told me more about how to support them than almost any other single piece of information I could ask for.

Closing The Behavior Gap

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And here's where this, and here's where this can give you an edge. Most nutrition practices and most nutritionists base their business around protocols. And the protocol is usually quite excellent, but where practitioners consistently fall short is on the behavior gap, the space between knowing what to do and actually doing it. So it's also a two-way street. It's your client knowing exactly what to do and them actually executing it. That gap isn't a problem with nutrition. It's a psychology problem. It's a psychology problem. It is the internal wiring of our clients' brains. And if you are delivering the same accountability structure, the same coaching cadence, the same follow-up approach to every single client, regardless of their tendency, you are going to get inconsistent results for your client and you're not even going to know why. Not because your work's not good, it's because it isn't, but because it isn't personalized to how that specific human is built to function based on inner and outer expectations. So the four tendencies literally closes that gap. It lets you walk into every relationship with your clients already equipped and knowing how they need to be supported. And it just gets to be easier. You stop guessing, you stop accidentally coaching your obliger like she's a rebel, you stop overwhelming your questioner without enough rationale. You start equipping your questioner with enough rationale and research. You stop suffocating your rebel with structure that she never asked for and is literally fuming at the thought of.

Using Tendencies In Your Business

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Okay, let's okay, let's flip the script back to business because this understanding doesn't just live in your client work, it lives in your business. Knowing your tendency as an entrepreneur is one of the most clarifying things you can do for the way that you run your business, how you build your offers and show up consistently. Like I said, when I understood that I was a rebel, everything made sense for me. It was like all these pieces started clicking together. And I was just able to understand how I operate. Rigid content calendars I've imposed on myself, they don't work for me. Arbitrary rules or schedules that feel like an obligation, even though I love the idea of them logistically, I will blow right past them. But connect something to my identity, to who I am, to my mission, what I am focused on building, and aligning that with the behaviors of somebody who has already achieved the thing that I want. I am unstoppable. And if you are a rebel, this is the key to your consistency because otherwise you are just fighting with yourself. And that is a battle that you will never win. So I've built my business around knowing the fact that I'm a rebel. I'm also an Aries, so I feel like I have extra things working against me in that regard with like the stubborn nature and stuff like that. But I'm able to frame my commitments as choices now. I build in flexibility for myself. I had to really, I had to really work on this for a very long time, but I stay connected to the identity of what I'm creating as somebody that has already created it rather than this checklist that I have to clear despite loving a good check mark on a piece of paper like Chef's Kiss. You give me a to-do list with things that I can check off, and I'm like, yes, I'm there. But if it feels too rigid, I can't do it. So if you're an obliger running your solo business, hear me on this. The structure that keeps most entrepreneurs going are inner expectations, personal deadlines, self-set goals, that internal motivation. And those are exactly the expectations that obligers struggle with. It feels so hard, which means without deliberate outer accountability, intentionally building your business and your life around other people who are holding you accountable, you will chronically underdeliver on your goals. And it's again not because of an incapability, but because your wiring needs outer structure that a solo business does not automatically provide. You have to go and find it. That might look like becoming a part of a mastermind, working with a coach, or finding an accountability partner, a peer group, or some sort of networking community, something that is able to create that real outer expectation around the inner work that building a solo business requires. If you're a questioner, do your research. Y'all love your research, so go on, get researched, and really trust your conclusions and set yourself a decision deadline so that the questioning doesn't become the reason that you never move. Questioners can get into analysis, paralysis. And one of my best friends is a questioner, and I will just I love her to pieces and I will just be like in my head, I'm like, questioner's gonna question. She's gotta ask a million questions. And you literally have to cut it off or sh or stop it because without an end line in sight, the questioner will keep going. They want more information and more information and more information. They can be very exhausting, and knowing that gives you a lot of ability to prepare yourself for a questionnaire. But like I said at the beginning, once a questioner understands that why and you've been able to connect that for them, they are bought in. They are so solid and they're like, I get it. This is what I want. Let's pony up and let's make it happen. Okay, upholders, you have to really loosen your grip on these guys quite a bit. So pivoting when something isn't working isn't failure, and they need to be reminded of that. It's simply data. So if you are working with a client who's an upholder, the best piece of advice is to loosen the grip a little. Pivot when something isn't working and know that it's not failure, it's just data. Your upholders are ready to go when they decide that they're ready to go. You don't have to be checking in with them constantly. Once they understand they're good, they're golden, the check-ins with them will feel a little bit annoying because they don't need you to be their cheerleader, if that makes sense. So knowing your tendency and understanding your clients' tendencies really helps explain behavior, how you react to them and how they react with you. And you basically just get to stop fighting with yourself and trying to figure things out and make things different, but you get to start building systems that match your actual wiring while also supporting your clients with their natural wiring. And everything just becomes so much easier. Now,

Ethical Sales Messaging By Tendency

SPEAKER_00 22:05

here's where I want to take this, but I also feel like I need to connect understanding tendencies to sales because when you understand how tendencies operate, you can utilize it in a super ethical way to help improve your sales. So when somebody lands in your world, let's say they're jumping onto your Instagram page or they've opted into your email list or they're meeting you on a discovery call, they have a tendency. Every single person has a tendency. And if you understand that, you can speak to them in a way that actually moves them because they and you get to, and if you understand that, you can speak to them in a way that actually moves them, it empowers them. Your questioner needs data and rationale, case studies, clear logic for why your program works. She is not buying on emotion alone the way that some other tendencies will. She needs the mechanism. So answer her objections before she even asks them. Make the logic airtight for her. Your obliger needs community and social proof. She needs to know that she won't be doing this alone. She needs to know that there are people in her corner. She needs to see accountability baked into your offers, your live calls, a group container, your check-ins, people alongside of her. The fear of isolated struggle is something that is very real for your obligers. So show her how you have a team to help her. And your rebel needs to feel like the decision is entirely hers. I mean, you can totally plant the seeds for us and then let us feel like we're taking the reins and being the genius that came up with the idea. We love that. But she doesn't need to be sold to and she won't be sold to. She wants to discover and she wants to choose. So your messaging for your rebels isn't here's why you need to do this. It's here's what is possible for you. And you can decide if you want to pick it up. Less is more with your rebels. They just need a little bit of information and they need to know where to find you. And then your upholder needs to trust that you're going to deliver. So she'll uphold her end completely. You don't have to worry about her. She just needs confidence that you are going to hold up what you are expected to. So she likes to see that there's clear structure, clear deliverables, and clear expectations. You won't always know somebody's tendency before they buy, but you are writing content, sending emails, running calls to all four of them at once, which means the most effective thing you can do is layer your messaging so each tendency finds what they need somewhere in what you put out. So this is where that strong communication actually gets to work. It is meeting people where they are before they ever really come into your world on a call or into an offer. And you became a nutritionist because you understand the you became a nutritionist because you understand the body. But the practitioners who build practices that last, who get the kind of results that actually get talked about and get them known for something, they understand the whole person. The four tendencies is literally one of the best tools I ever brought into my practice years and years and years

Free Assessment And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 26:11

ago. I was lucky to kind of start off understanding the four tendencies, being a big fan of Gretchen Rubin's, but it's great because it's free to take. You do your assessment at GretchenRubin.com and know your own tendency first before you send it to a single client. Because you cannot use this as well if you are still coaching everyone, like they're wired the way that you are, and you have to know how you differ from your clients. So if you're ready to stop, so go and take that. I'll leave a link for it down below in the show notes. Come back to Instagram, find me at Instagram at Lee McSwan underscore and let me know what tendency you are. I'm super curious. And if you're ready to stop being the best kept secret in your industry and start selling your services in a way that feels completely natural, your tendency included, I want you to look at sales confidence. It's a four-week intensive for the nutritionists who are done undercharging, overexplaining, and hoping the right clients find them. I'm going to teach you how to sell in a way that is ethical, aligned, and built around who you actually are with nutrition businesses at the forefront. The link is in the show notes. The link is in the show notes. The link is in the show notes. I hope to see you inside. And that's everything for this episode. I'll see you next week.