Are you REALLY coaching? Or is it advice in disguise?

As coaches, our coaching is not supposed to be about us. But often, what we call coaching is really advice or counseling. All three conversations have a use and a place, but it is important to know what you are doing and what your intent is. Why? For coaching to be effective, the performer needs to own the conversation and subsequent actions.

Please, managers, do not start a conversation with, "Bob, can I give you some advice?"  Bob will probably be polite, but he is surely thinking that he wants your advice about as much as a root canal with no numbing shot. Honestly, unless we are highly fascinating thought leaders (and even then), most people don't want to hear our advice. They want help.

This has been a hard lesson to learn over the years and I realize that this post - and most posts, I suppose - are a kind of advice. I feel better thinking about them as appetizers. I am not suggesting you follow what I say, but inviting you to think about the topic in a way that might be helpful.

And when I have a clueless coaching client (I don't have any now, all my current coaching clients are brilliant :-), I oh-so-want to give advice. I want to snap their heads into a better place. But this is not the right thing to do and it is not coaching.

Look at these circles. Where do you spend most of your time?

Do you know how to switch into coaching? Pretend you are going from the role of pampered movie star to world-class butler (switch into a high service orientation). This is easier said than done for you story tellers out there - you know who you are. Story tellers are great, because they are interesting folks. AND most tell 50% more stories than are needed and sought. We can't help ourselves! But we should try.

Comments

[Tahlib]

So, what is the difference? It's nice to see the distinction through the graph but how about a definition of each?

[Carl Ingalls]

I am a consultant, not a coach. However, I have found I get better results when I do not give advice, even when my client thinks that they have hired me to give them advice.

Instead, I lead them on a discovery process. It takes a lot more time and effort than just telling them what to do, but they are far more likely to do it when presented this way, which means that they are far more likely to benefit from my intervention.

So if this is true for consulting, then it must be even more so for coaching.

Thanks for the "advice".

Carl Ingalls

[lisa haneberg]

Tahlib - great question and perhaps a good topic for a future post.

Carl - I agree. This general concept is also very important in consulting. It is an art to balance offering the expertise that clients want with the facilitation that will help them discover and own solutions.

[davidburkus]

I'd bet that 75% of the time, it's just giving advice.

[imelda]

Yeap, I think I disguise my "giving advice" as "sharing information", but it's advice just the same.

Thanks for the insightful post.

[Richard Himmer]

I read a study about the clients of Financial Planners. The end-result was that giving advice shuts down the capacity of the brain to make decisions. You're suggesting that coaching is the art of delegating decision-making to the client.

Very profound! Thank you.

Richard Himmer

[Harris Silverman]

I agree with Carl. Coaching isn't advising, it's developing the client to where they need to be. The client doesn't just follow (or reject) your advice; his/her skills or attitudes develop so that he/she is in a new place.