1. THE COACH’S NOTEBOOK:
AVOIDING THE TEMPTATION TO GIVE ADVICE
Ask any practicing Coach what his or her biggest challenge is in the
coaching process and, invariably, the answer is: “avoiding the temptation
to give advice”. Maybe giving advice is something deeply ingrained in our
psyche through nurture and education. Or maybe because it is simply
easier and faster to tell a client what to do than to coach until he finds the
answer himself. We as coaches regularly forget our own dictum that: We
do not have the answer… only the client does… and it is our role to help
him find it. This article provides three simple ideas that might help every
practicing coach avoid the easy temptation of giving advice.
TRISTAN B DE LA ROSA
Founder & Principal Coach
www.thebanyanway.com
© 2008 Banyan Way Page 1
2. Ask any practicing Coach what his or her biggest challenge is in the
coaching process and, invariably, the answer is: “avoiding the temptation
to give advice”. Maybe giving advice is something deeply ingrained in our
psyche through nurture and education – from the time when we were kids
and we had parents and teachers telling us how to behave, to today’s
leadership gurus telling us how to become more effective and productive
executives. Or, maybe something that we are just inclined to simply
because we are just too lazy to do otherwise -- it is, after all, easier and
faster to tell a client what to do than coach until he finds the answer
himself. But the bottom line simply is this: we as coaches -- despite our
better judgment -- are strongly prone to giving advice when coaching a
client. We regularly forget our own dictum that: We do not have the
answer… only the client does… and it is our role to help him find it.
Not to imply that I no longer suffer from this malady, but here are some
tips that I have used to help me avoid the temptation to give advice:
1. Empty your cup.
A Tao parable tells us of a young man who went to the temple to ask a
monk to take him in as a disciple. To prove his intellect and worth as a
disciple, the young man launched on a discourse about the meaning of
life. The monk asked the young man to fill a cup with water. The monk
poured more water into the already-full cup until it overflowed, and the
water formed a puddle at their feet. His sandals soaking wet, the young
man asked the monk what he was trying to do. The monk replied: “You
cannot fill a cup unless it is first empty.” And so it is with the mind.
Before starting an engagement, I first picture my mind being emptied of
all my preconceived notions, personal biases -- background “noise” that
could get in the way of my cup being filled by the client. Other coaches
refer to this as being in the state of “not knowing” – not to suggest
ignorance but to suggest a state of being aware that one is consciously
staving off all personal information that might unintentionally color the
coaching conversation. By being consciously in this state of not knowing,
of picturing myself as an empty cup, I am somehow able to keep my mind
from being flooded by thoughts that rightly have no bearing on the client’s
concerns.
© 2008 Banyan Way Page 2
3. 2. Refrain from mental googling.
When listening to others, do you often find yourself taking selected bits of
information from the speaker and cataloguing these against your personal
library of experiences to find some kind of a “fit” with which to configure a
reply? I refer to this as mental googling, latching on to key words and
running these through the search engine of our minds.
When we mentally google, we are in fact preparing to launch ourselves
into a “telling” mode, gearing up with facts and information scoured from
the catch basin of our own life experiences to support the advice that we
are about to give. What we, therefore, need to do is to catch ourselves in
the act as we are about to mentally type in key words and hit our cranial
search button. We need to mentally cry, “Stop!” and immediately return
into the conversation stream with the client.
Easy to say but it takes a lot of effort not to mentally stray away when
listening to a client. But it is this “staying in the moment” – keeping your
mental flow in tune with that of your client, refraining from delving into
past experiences to find a fit, or jumping into the future with conclusions
and ideas for actions and next steps -- that we need in order to prevent
ourselves from giving advice.
Here are some concrete steps I take to refrain from mental googling:
Listen to understand, not to reply. Listening to understand forces
you to “stay in the moment”, to refrain from looking back to your
own life experiences for similarities or contrasts, or from making
assessments and conclusions as to your client’s condition.
Do not analyze for the client. If any analysis has to be done, it must
be done by the client. Your role is to ask questions that would help
him with the analytical process.
Refrain from personalizing the client’s experience. As one coach
puts it, do not let your “stuff” get in the way. When you do so, you
stray away from the client’s path and force the conversation into
your own path featuring your own story.
© 2008 Banyan Way Page 3
4. 3. Ask deep non-suggestive questions.
Probe. Use open-ended questions that allow the client to interpret them
in his own way, within the paradigm of his own experience. This way, his
answers will be his own, specifically addressed to the questions as he
interprets them to mean. “What do you think?”, “Tell me more about…”,
“What can you do to…?” “What have you done? ”What else?” “What do
you hope to accomplish?” “Can you elaborate on that?”
Be careful with questions that can unwittingly steer a client towards an
unintended direction; or worse, towards a direction dictated by your
predilection to give advice. Close-ended questions – those that force a
person into a yes or a no, or into a choice of limited highly specific
answers – lend themselves very well to direction-setting and should
therefore be used sparingly, if not avoided entirely. Remember that you
are a coach, not a lawyer grilling a witness in a way that would “sell” his
view of the case to a panel of jurists.
To summarize…
In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran wrote: “No man can reveal to you aught but
that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge… If
a (teacher) is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his
wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind”. As
coaches my hope is that we are for always mindful that our role is purely
to serve as a conveyance for our clients in their journey to discover their
own solutions to life’s enigmas.
© 2008 Banyan Way Page 4
5. About the Author:
Driven by a personal mission to “take executives to the
edge and push them to fly – as leaders”, Tristan B de la
Rosa is the Founder & Principal Coach of Banyan Way,
an executive coaching and development company. He is
also in the Coaching Advisory Board & Faculty of
Northwestern University. Tristan brings an uncommon
blend of masterful real-world experience and rich multi-
national & multi-cultural insight to the Executive
Coaching field. He has decades of leadership
experience working at the world’s most respected CPG
companies, among them P&G, J&J, General Foods, and
the Wrigley Co. As country head or senior marketing
executive, he has been posted in some of the world’s
most important and fastest growing markets – including
China, India, the tiger economies of South East Asia –
and in the United States. Tristan is based in Chicago
where he shares a home with his wife, Marilyn. Tristan
can be contacted at
tristan.delarosa@thebanyanway.com.
Read his blog at http://bwintrospections.blogspot.com.
© 2008 Banyan Way Page 5
