Some Advice about Advice

Here's what you should do: don't give advice

On the first day of the very first week of my training at coach school, the facilitator told us that coaches don't give advice. Advice is not part of coaching.

I was shook. I think a lot of my classmates were, too. We had heard from other people, "You give such good advice! You should be a coach!" (I used to have an Unsolicited Advice category in my blog.) But it soon became clear that advice is usually not the best support we have to offer.

The thing is, advice is usually too much about the advisor. It doesn't really matter what I would do in your situation, but all my advice tells you is just that: what I would do, what I did, what I think is a good idea. My advice reflects my values, my priorities, and my available resources.

But I am not you; my values, my experience, and my motivations are all different. There is some tiny chance that my advice will apply to your situation, but it's statistically unlikely.

Another thing about advice is that it's often not needed. How many times have you sat with a friend who wanted advice, patiently waited as they explained the situation... and then talked themselves all the way around to a solution without you saying a word? (In software development this is called rubber duck debugging.) If you had butted in with your hot take, your friend might never have come to their solution — which is almost certainly going to be more relevant than whatever you might have come up with.

Erica Jong said, "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn't." That's a bit of a grim take — the solution we're searching for isn't necessarily the one we dread — but there often is a barrier between you and your solution. If it's not dread, it might be fear, or insecurity, or a conflict in values.

And that is where I come in as coach: First, in asking the right questions to get you to the solution that's probably in there somewhere (or at least, to get you closer to it). And second, to help you figure out what's really coming between you and your solution.