Want to Help Someone? Don't Give Advice!

A peer or direct report comes to you and wants to discuss an issue they’re having with someone else. Which of the following describes how you would approach this discussion?

A – Ask a lot of questions about the situation so I can get a complete understanding of the issue.

B – Give the peer/direct report advice on how he should proceed.

C – Do both A & B

D – Other

If your answer is C, let me ask another question: Which of the following experiences have you had in applying approaches A & B?

A – I spent most of the discussion trying to understand the issue but still don’t think I quite grasped it.

B – I know I didn’t grasp the issue because the person responded to my advice by saying, “No, I don’t think you quite grasp the issue.”

C – After each piece of advice I gave, the peer/direct report said, “Yeah, I tried that, but it didn’t work.”

D – If the person was a direct report, I sensed he was treating my advice as a directive and only reluctantly agreed to follow it.

E – More than one of the above.

F – None of the above.

If you answered anything other than F, then congratulations! You’ve already discovered the downside of treating coaching as a joint problem-solving exercise in which you try to advise the coachee what to do.

In my previous article, I recommended that the Yes! Leader keep two key points in mind about coaching:

Think of yourself as a facilitator, not as an advisor. Yes, there are times when giving advice might be appropriate – say, when you’re already deeply familiar with the coachee’s specific issue and have a nearly identical experience when something worked for you.  But even if your advice is pure gold, what has the coachee learned from the situation – other than that he should come to you for advice in the future rather than try to work things out on his own? Taking an Asking approach rather than a Telling approach will help stimulate the coachee’s thinking and facilitate his ability to resolve his own issues – the current issue and future issues as well.

Help the coachee focus on future possibilities rather than current barriers. One sure way to stay mired in the Current Reality is to spend a lot of your coaching time in Sergeant Joe Friday, “Just the facts” mode, in which you find yourself grilling the coachee for a detailed description of her dilemma.  This approach goes hand-in-hand with the Advisor orientation, since we feel that, in order to give good advice, we need to have a complete understanding of the coachee’s situation. However, as your quiz answers may have shown, you likely won’t be able to get a good sense of the situation without a lengthy conversation (if even then).  And, by fixating so much on the problems and barriers that block progress, the coachee can start to wallow in a sense of negativity and futility – not a good way for the Yes! Leader to lead off a coaching session.

Remember, coaching isn’t about you understanding the current situation; it’s about the coachee identifying a future path.  You can take a lot of pressure off yourself, and provide more of a positive learning experience for the coachee, if you quickly acknowledge the Current Reality and begin asking future-focused questions to get the coachee to paint a vivid mental picture of the Goal.