Essential Coaching Skills for Managers #2: Advice is overrated
The Essential Coaching Skills series is first posted on the excellent Make Work Meaningful blog.
The Essential Coaching Skills series continues here every Wednesday.
Turn off your finely-tuned advice-giving machine
Here’s the deal. As a manager wanting to do more coaching, you’ve got a big challenge.
For years, you’ve been trained, encouraged, nurtured and rewarded to give advice. You’re a font of knowledge, a walking resource, the person to turn to when there’s a question to be answered.
Which is not a bad thing. Because there’s a place for giving on-the-job advice as a manager.
But, sadly, it’s a much smaller place than the advice-giving mansion in which you currently hang out.
Here’s one way to think about things, which I first heard from David Rock, a leader in embedding internal coaching capacity within organizations.
Think of all the times you get advice on a daily, weekly and yearly basis.
Notice how much of that advice isn’t much good, or not quite right – polite words for “kind of sucks”. And then notice that, of the advice you do take, how much of it is not as useful as you’d hoped it turns out to be.
Well – that’s how employees feel about your advice as their manager as well.
Your coaching action
Spend the next week paying attention to how much advice you give (and you get). Notice the rush you’re in to come up with a soution.
See if you can hold back the advice just a bit. Ask three good questions before you give your next piece of advice. See what difference those questions make.
Additional reading
Quiet Leadership by David Rock [aff. link]. Rock’s first book on coaching and with interesting things to say about neuroscience and coaching.
The Answer to How Is Yes by Peter Block [aff. link]. Block is a hero to me, really brilliant at helping people assume responsibility for their own lives at work. In this typically lucid and grounded book, he talks about the importance of finding your own way and the danger of relying on “best practice”.
- Essential Coaching Skills for Managers #1: Getting Started
- Essential Coaching Skills for Managers #3: 7 Core Coaching Questions (1)
- Essential Coaching Skills for Managers #4: Real active listening
- Essential Coaching Skills for Managers #5: 7 Core Coaching Questions (2)
- Advice from Thelonius Monk
Love this post…it is RIGHT where my head was this morning. Had some interaction with colleagues and SO wanted to give advice. But decided to just listen and respond by sort of restating what they had said, instead of trying to “fix” their problems. This is NOT what I immediately want to do in this situation. But today I decided that it was a better route. I didn’t take on their problems and they felt heard. If they want advice, they’ll ask for it…if they want to vent, then just listen. Don’t know if I have “cured” myself, but I am feeling more aware and ready to do things differently.
Funny how this post came along at just the right time for me.
Thanks!
*grin* – delighted to hear it Heidi
“Advice-giving mansion” = brilliant
Thanks, Nancy ~
Thanks for the recommendation of The Answer To How Is Yes by Peter Block. I read Flawless Consulting and find it to be an invaluable resource – I look forward to reading another of his books!