What role does advice play in coaching?

Coaching is a professional service that attracts clients who want to make big changes in their lives or overcome obstacles. Many clients assume that they are going to work with someone who can give answers or solutions.

Persons who seek help in improving their life or business might then believe that they will be receiving advice from a professional. When we begin to have coaching conversations with prospective clients or contracted clients, we as trained professional Life Coaches (aka personal and professional coaches) must really be clear that giving advice is not really part of the coaching paradigm.

Advising (the act of giving advice) according to the Webster's collegiate dictionary is 'to make a recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct,' and it 'implies real or presumed knowledge and experience.' . Coaching is to empower, to motivate, to enrich, to co create with our clients. In fact, I believe that effective coaching is even more than problem solving or being solution focused. Coaching is about the creative process of designing one's life to be more like they really want it to be. That is creation'.bringing into being what does not now exist. Problem solving is about symptoms and fixing, not creating.

'The trouble with advice is that you cannot tell if it is good or bad until you've taken it.' - Frank Tyger

Advising then, should be omitted from the coaching conversation and as coaches, we also need to 'train' our clients to not expect advice, even though we might be capable of some very good advice.

Many of us as coaches would also qualify as advisors or consultants, which are focused more on giving direction and recommended action. Part of the joy I experience as a coach is that I do not have to wear the 'expert' hat'my job is to evoke the brilliance of each of my clients and the creativity that comes from a conversation that if it had not occurred would not have lead to the same result. Coaching is creativity.

My friend and mentor, and outstanding author, Dave Ellis has created a Coaching Continuum in which he outlines the role of the coach from least intrusive to the most intrusive coaching response. In this continuum, as printed below, the dotted line indicates the boundary between classic coaching and advising. It is a line for all coaches to be cognizant of.

Listen to your coaching, maybe even tape record your conversations for awhile to see if you slip into the realm of advising. We all do it so naturally, but as coaches we need to be intentional to eschew advice giving. (The reader can find this explained in detail in Ellis's book Life Coaching which can be ordered at www.lifecoachbook.com .)

I believe that the beginning of the coaching continuum is most useful early in the coaching relationship. Even though I am very much a 'possibility thinker' with my clients, I never offer my possibilities until I have drawn out my clients creative thinking first. And sometimes, the powerful questioning we utilize from our coaches toolbox, can be disguised advice if we are not careful. There is a difference in the kind of questions you ask and why you ask them. Powerful questions should open up possibilities, inquiry, and creativity'not lead it to a known or preconceived response.

When I was a clinical psychologist, taught of course to not give advice, there were times that I simply had some good advice to give my clients. When I delivered it, I said, 'Now I am going to give some advice here, but remember it is just my best thinking in this moment'it does not mean it is the best or right thing to do, but it might help you consider options to this advice or adaptations for your situation.' I say something very similarly to my coaching clients or students. Even when words from me sound like advice, I frame it as 'my best thinking in the moment' and offer it as a possibility, not a requirement.

Coaching is, after all, about increasing clients choices which lead to creating what they really want to develop, or bring into existence in their personal or professional life. For coaching to be transformational, we want to reinforce self-discovery. Coaching is a process to help people maintain and develop an internal locus of empowerment. Advice, even great advice, inherently leads the client to look for and external locus of influence. Remember coaching is an art form not a science and it works best when creativity is the process present in every coaching conversation. My advice, (I mean my request) is for all coaches to be an artist, not an advisor.

Patrick Williams, Ed.D., MCC
Presdent & CEO, Institute for Life Coach Training