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XSonia Gill E-mail: soniagill_@hotmail.com Web Site: http://www.ukheadsup.com Info: Sonia is the founder of Heads Up, an education consultancy which combines her years in education and senior business leadership to develop leadership skills and high performing teams in schools. As a psychology graduate Sonia has always had a keen interest and passion in developing people, this led to her to coaching which further compliments her consultancy work.Posts by the author (5)

To advise or not advise; that is the question

I’ve always been a bit anti-advice giving in coaching sessions.  After all it’s not coaching is it?  However the more I coach the more I realise that this is a time and place for advice.  Not a very big place, in fact so far I’d say less than 1% of total my coaching time has involved giving advice and if I’m being really honest all of it was in one coaching session I had last week.  Which was a big surprise for me!

I’m working with a client who, at short notice, found out she had to attend an assessment centre for a role she’s applied for.  The days were to be filled with a variety of activities, spanning a range of competencies and certainly challenging all who attend.  It was great to hear how calm, measured and confident she was in her approach this which was exactly what we had been working on.  Her biggest concern was the actual interview itself and we talked about why, how she felt about the many other elements of the assessment days, what she would like to achieve at the end of the coaching session, what the challenge for her was and so on.

The problem, you could say, was that I’m really good at interviews.  I’m not going to be modest on this because I’ve got very nearly every job I’ve gone for in the last 7 years, although it hasn’t always this way believe me!  But what I have developed is a great process to prepare and perform in interviews.  I hit a cross roads in the session:  should I coach, or should I advise?  Coaches don’t give advice.  But I know a method that really does work and might really help this person.  What should I do?  The answer presented itself:  I offered my client a choice on how we could proceed.  I was really clear that the advice really was only advice which she was welcome to if she wanted it but that I wouldn’t be offended if she didn’t take it or didn’t use it.  I also re-iterated my aim was only to support her as best I can, but that I needed to know from her which she would prefer:  coaching or advice.  She chose advice.

I don’t give advice out of habit and the more I coach the less I feel any urge to give advice.  However the feedback from my client was that it was really useful in this instance and now she had a really good way to move forward in preparing for her interview.  For me the lesson was that occasionally, when coaching, giving advice is the right thing to do, but that you have not be wedded to it and be really clear with the client that it really is only advice for them to decide if they want to use it.  And most important of all let them decide if you are going to give the advice to them.

Filed Under Coaching in Action

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