The Coaching Trap
While many say that pure coaching consists of giving no advice at all, I’ve heard many coaches confess that they do give advice from time to time. I would love to hear from you—what is your stance? And, what can we coaches do to get it right? Here is a technique that coaches and coachees have found extremely useful.
Imagine that you are coaching someone who is describing a dilemma in which they feels really stuck. They finally say: “What do YOU think I should do?”
Try this three-step technique:
- Throw the question back and say, “Well, I’d like to hear YOUR thoughts first. What do YOU think?” I call this the “first mover status”—give them the first shot at the answer. These will jumpstart their brain to be proactive, generating solutions, instead of waiting passively for you to save the day.
- You can then turn it into a one-way brainstorm session, by asking “What else could you do?” time after time, varying your wording as needed. You will notice that the silences after your questions will get longer and longer. This is because their first answers will consist of ideas they’ve already thought of, so no new thought. But once they run out of ready-to-go answers, they will need more time to create new ideas—hence the silences. And it is very likely that they may come up with some ideas that you had already thought of in the process.
- When they finally cannot think of anything else, and if you still have a few ideas up your sleeve, you can inquire: “I have a few more ideas. Would you like me to share them?” With this question, you are giving them a choice, which is important. I have regularly experienced coachees not wanting any ideas from me at this point in the conversation because they are so happy with the solutions they’ve generated themselves!
What have you done here? You’ve gotten your coachee to move from asking for help and reactively waiting for advice to proactively generating their own solutions.
So the next time that you find yourself being asked for advice during a coaching conversation, try this three-step technique to engage your coachee in the creative process of finding solutions on their own!
Julie Johnson, MCC (Netherlands)
Julie Johnson, MCC, whose career began in the early 1990s, is one of the most experienced executive coaches and facilitators in Europe. She specializes in helping leaders and their teams achieve higher levels of performance.
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Really like your 3 step technique. often the coachee has the resources they just might not know it.
Like you, I invite the coachee to think first of what they might do and paraphrase that. If they are really stuck I might ask if they would like some suggestions. If they agree I would try to present 2-3 possibilities and then hand it back to them with a question ‘ so what might your thoughts be around these options?’
Hi Lucy – It sounds like we are really aligned! When they are brainstorming, those silences between the coach’s ‘What else?’ and the coachee’s answer can get quite long – and this is when they are thinking their hardest. it’s a beautiful moment! Thanks for your thoughts – Julie
Thanks a lot, this is so simple and sensible, have been practicing more or less the same approach.
This is just one way to present the concept, indeed. i believe that it is the philosophy behind it all that is the most important: encouraging our coachees to ‘go for it’ and come up with their own thoughts first, making sure that we bring them to creating new thoughts, asking permission/contracting for any further ideas we may have after that (and not giving these ideas if the coachee doesn’t want them!).
I also like the idea of phrasing any suggestions as something like “I know someone who was in a similar situation and they……” that way the coaches feels it is not your advice and feel less obligated to follow it.
And if I can build on what you say here, I think that this would be a great opportunity to ‘contract’ with the client: “I know someone who was in a similar situation. Would you like to hear how they managed it?” That way you have your clients permission to share the story.
I find that listening and know your clients ideas well enough as nothing is new just the approach is different. Everyone want to get to the top quickly and with the less amount of energy to be spent on any one project, what do we say or do when the expectection is not realistic?
Well, it’s kind of like: Tell me what to do. Then I do it. And then I’ll succeed and have a nice life.’ BUT, what if you tell them what to do and they do it and it doesn’t work and they fail. They can just blame you, because they’ve put the responsibility for the solution and its success in your lap! What would work for you if you were in their situation may not necessarily work for them.
in my idea, the theory of Asking them what do you think and what or what could you do and questions like these is a very good idea to move on the conversation and convince them to speak more.
thank you for your great article.
Thank you for your kind feedback. It is absolutely amazing what they come up with when you continually throw the question back to them: ‘What else could you do?’ We must believe in the innate abilities of our coachees.
I use brainstorming quite often in my coaching and always ask permission to contribute if I feel I have something that may not have been mentioned. Then when reviewing what we came up with in the brainstorm it leaves it up to them to take what works best for themselves, which 99 percent of the time is their own ideas. This helps them feel more self confident and produces more ownership for them to act 🙂
What a beautiful way of working! And this way we avoid creating a dependent relationship. W are aligned!
Hi Julie,
Very helpful to have some strategies to keep the coaching session moving forward when it loses momentum – and also to help move away from giving straight out advice.
Thanks
Glen
You’re most welcome!
I also like adding in questions like:
* If you were in my shoes, what do you think I would suggest ?
* Who are the people who you most respect in this area for the wisdom around this topic ? …and then what do you think they would advise you to consider?
…at times depending on the scenario…you can step through a few common ones like: Child, partner, boss, pastor, client, father, mother, mentor, best friend, most respected colleague etc as appropriate.
…what you are doing here is helping them think outside their own inhibitions/filters and think like someone else. It can open a deep vein of options..
I love it! Getting the coachee to put themselves in another’s shoes. Many others!
When pressed for what I think, I will share how I would coach myself. In other words, these are the questions I would ask of myself and I would explore what values I’d want to honor within myself. Usually they are happy understanding my thinking process rather than receiving any detailed advice.
What a great technique! Thanks for sharing, Neal!
Lovely! How nice to propose the idea of self-coaching – ‘What questions could you ask yourself?’ And it would be great to explore what values the coachee would want to honor within him/herself. Thanks for sharing!
I love this listed as a 3 step approach. I always aim to ask my clients for their thoughts or ideas first and like you try and get them to explore more ideas themselves. I also use the ‘would you consider’ or ‘have you thought about’. Subtly steering them towards the ideas I might have in my mind so they come up with the ideas rather than them being my ideas. Thanks for sharing – very helpful. Also really helpful seeing other comments too.
Yes, it helps give some structure to it all. I find that with ‘would you consider’ etc, that it can be seen as advice in disguise. If we contract first (after tapping into all of their own wonderful resources) then we have permission to share. Thanks for joining the discussion!
A very simple yet insightful approach towards resolving a common dilemma we faced as Execuve Coaches. Well done Julie. Cheers. Prif Sattar Bawany – Certified C-Suite Master Executive Coach, Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global)
Thanks, Sattar!
A very simple yet insightful approach towards resolving a common dilemma we faced as Execuve Coaches. Well done Julie. Cheers. Prof Sattar Bawany – Certified C-Suite Master Executive Coach, Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global)
One way I like to propose is by asking what he/she doesn’t want to or can’t do and then list examples of possibilities. From that list discuss each for the client to state his/her pros and cons adn what the next step can be to take (ie gather more information, contact someone, apply for something, look up something, process emotions, rest etc).
*and
I find your technique VERY interesting. To make sure I’ve got it right: (1) first coachee lists what s/he doesn’t want to do, (2) then coachee lists possible things s/he could do,(3) then coachee lists pros and cons of the latter and finally (4) coachee goes out and collects more info. I like the first step because one thing it can do is bring the coachee back to honoring his/her core values and being true to them. And regarding the last step of collecting more information, it reminds us coaches that the answer doesn’t need to be ‘in the room’. Coaching training programs often espouse that the coach needs to believe that the answer lies in the coachee, but sometimes it doesn’t because s/he simply doesn’t have enough information. BUT, our coachees can be perfectly capable of collecting that information – keeping the responsibility for success in their hands. Thanks so much for sharing!