Do Executive Coaches Give Advice?

Coaches avoid advice because your answers last longer than theirs

Coaches hold back advice because a decision you reach yourself is one you understand, believe in and can defend in the room. Advice from outside often breaks the first time reality differs from the coach's assumptions, and the coach never fully knows your organisation, your people or your history.

There is a second reason. Most leadership challenges are not knowledge problems. You often know what you should do; something stops you doing it. Advice cannot reach that something. Questions can.

Finally, advice builds dependence. Coaching aims for the opposite: a leader whose own thinking is sharper at the end than it was at the start.

Instead of advice, an executive coach offers five things

Executive coaching is not passive listening. A coach brings plenty to the conversation, just not ready-made answers.

• ✦Questions that open up options you had not considered or expose an assumption you had not noticed
• ✦Observations about patterns in what you say, how you say it and what you avoid
• ✦Challenge when your story about a situation does not hold together
• ✦Frameworks and tools, such as an assessment or a model for a hard conversation, offered as lenses rather than instructions
• ✦Accountability for the actions you committed to and an honest look at what happened

Coaches sometimes share a perspective, but only openly and with permission

Experienced coaches do occasionally offer a view, and that is not a breach of coaching. What matters is how. A coach should ask first, make clear it is one perspective among many and hand the decision straight back to you.

With 26+ years in HR, talent development and leadership roles, I have seen many organisational situations from the inside. Sometimes it is useful to say, "Would it help to hear a pattern I have seen elsewhere?" If you say yes, I offer it as information, and then we return to what you think.

Coaching, mentoring and consulting sit at different points on the advice spectrum

The amount of advice you receive depends on the kind of help you choose. Knowing this helps you buy the right thing.

• ✦For the full comparison, read coaching vs consulting and executive coaching vs mentoring.

A hypothetical example: the director who wanted to be told

Imagine a director deciding whether to restructure her department. She arrives at coaching asking, "Just tell me, would you do it?"

A coach might instead ask what she would advise a peer in the same position, what she is most afraid of getting wrong and who she has not yet consulted. Within the session she realises the structure is not the real issue: she is avoiding a hard conversation with one senior manager. Advice about restructuring would have missed that entirely.

If you want more guidance, say so at the start

Some leaders want a more directive style, at least at first, and that is a fair thing to discuss in the coaching agreement. A good coach will explain how they work and adjust the balance of questions, tools and perspective within the boundaries of coaching.

If you want to experience the difference for yourself, my one-to-one executive coaching starts with a free discovery call where you can ask exactly how I work.