Coaching is not about rescuing people. How to tame the advice monster

Michael knows what it takes to be a great coach, he was recently named world's number one thought leader in coaching and his book The Coaching Habit has sold more than 700,000 copies.

In his book, Michael distinguishes between coaching for performance and coaching for development:

“Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. It’s putting out the fire or building up the fire or banking the fire. It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary. Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire. This conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful.” 

He also leverages off Carl Rogers, the famous psychologist who pioneered person centred therapy, when he questions our ability to listen and our propensity to give advice.  He argues we should resist this. Instead listening in and asking questions will generate more capacity for to learn and change for the other person:

“This is why, in a nutshell, advice is overrated. I can tell you something, and it’s got a limited chance of making its way into your brain’s hippocampus, the region that encodes memory. If I can ask you a question and you generate the answer yourself, the odds increase substantially.” 

It is what Michael calls:

“helping to create the space for people to have those learning moments.” 

Michael in his book unpacks his seven essential coaching questions that people can use today with their staff, their partners and their children. Coaching is about asking the right question. Without a good question, a good answer has no place to go.