Understanding the Difference Between Guidance and Advice:
The first step in understanding respectful guidance is understanding the distinction between advice and guidance. Advice often implies a directive approach, where one person tells another what they should do. In contrast, when someone offers guidance, they provide insights and perspectives while allowing the other person to retain control over their decisions.
The Lure of the Advice Trap
Michael Bungay Stanier’s book “The Advice Trap” explains that leadership coaches, despite their best intentions, may fall into a habit of offering solutions and directives rather than allowing clients to explore and discover their own paths. This habit, called the “advice trap”, is often driven by an ego-centric desire to quickly add demonstrable value. However, by repeatedly short-circuiting the process of self-discovery and rushing to resolve the client’s issue, the coach undermines the client’s autonomy, potentially leading to dependency, hindering the development of critical problem-solving skills, or diminishing their self-accountability. In other words, an advice trap is one that traps both the coach and the client into a potentially unhealthy relationship where neither party, but especially the client, benefits. Additionally, when coaches offer advice, they often have limited knowledge of the intricacies and nuances of their client’s true challenges. This can result in the coach inadvertently inserting their own biases and perspectives, which may not be fully relevant or helpful to the client’s unique context. By recognizing and avoiding this trap, coaches can focus on empowering clients to leverage their own insights and strengths, ensuring that the coaching process remains client-centered and effective.
Balancing Active Inquiry with Guidance:
As we grow and develop as coaches, we develop an understanding of how the trap works, why we should avoid it, and why the rules exist. This new understanding allows us to effectively navigate the delicate balance between active inquiry and guidance. In other words, when we fully understand the rule, we can then understand when to break it and elevate our coaching into a powerful resource for our clients.
With permission and the caveat that any guidance is meant as a starting point for self-discovery, guidance and suggestions may be provided when the client gets stuck due to a blind spot or appears lost and frustrated. This approach helps to reestablish momentum and provides a fresh perspective without undermining the client’s autonomy. When clients understand the purpose of our guidance and that it is not meant to be directive, they appreciate the coach’s motivations and understand that the guidance is offered with supportive intent and for the right reasons.
Defining Respectful Guidance:
Where the advice trap represents a habit, respectful guidance is a targeted and infrequent tool used intentionally and sparingly in the right circumstances. It is not about taking over the client’s decision-making process but, as discussed above, about offering a helpful nudge when they are genuinely stuck.
Respectful guidance is an approach where the coach offers insights, suggestions, or advice with the client’s explicit permission and understanding that helps them explore new possibilities rather than direct their actions. This type of guidance is provided to recenter the conversation or offer a fresh perspective, ensuring the client retains full control over their decisions. The key to respectful guidance is that it is used sparingly and thoughtfully, enhancing the coaching process without creating dependency or undermining the client’s autonomy. This concept builds on the principles discussed by Michael Bungay Stanier in his other book “The Coaching Habit,” where he emphasizes the importance of balancing powerful questions with occasional, well-placed advice guidance. By integrating these principles, respectful guidance becomes a powerful tool to support clients in their journey, offering them the best of both inquiry and advisory approaches.
Client Empowerment and Ownership:
Respectful guidance not only aids clients in overcoming obstacles but also fosters a sense of empowerment and ownership over their development. When clients are encouraged to find their own solutions with supportive nudges from the coach, they are more likely to feel invested in their growth and more confident in their abilities. This empowerment leads to sustainable change and a deeper integration of insights into their daily lives.
Practical Example of Respectful Guidance:
Consider a scenario where a client is struggling to make a strategic decision. Through active inquiry, the coach helps the client explore various angles but notices the client is stuck due to a blind spot. With the client’s permission, the coach shares a relevant industry practice that the client had not considered. Even with this careful approach, the coach can easily be wrong and must emphasize that the guidance is not directive but meant as a catalyst to initiate new ideas or directions, allowing the client to reframe the problem and move forward with renewed clarity and confidence.
Conclusion:
By sidestepping the advice trap and embracing the principles of respectful guidance, the coaching relationship can be transformed, fostering a collaborative environment where clients feel empowered to explore new possibilities and make their own decisions. By integrating insights from Michael Bungay Stanier’s works, we ensure that our coaching practice not only avoids the pitfalls of the advice trap but also leverages the power of thoughtful, well-timed guidance to enhance the client’s journey.
In the ever-evolving leadership/executive coaching landscape, the balance between inquiry and guidance is crucial. Respectful guidance, used sparingly and intentionally, serves as a catalyst for client growth, helping them overcome obstacles and gain clarity. This approach underscores the essence of client-centered coaching, where the ultimate goal is to empower clients to harness their strengths and achieve sustainable, meaningful change in a self-directed and deeply impactful manner.
You can read about how I integrate respectful guidance as part of my leadership coaching practice here, My Coaching Approach: One Conversation Can Change Everything