Marcia Reynolds posted this recently on LinkedIn –
Many leaders think it is easier to give advice than to take the time to coach others to find their own solutions. They don’t realize they are wasting time instead of saving it.
When you tell people what to do, your primarily access their short-term memory in their cognitive brain, where learning is least effective. They either comply or resist, and often do not remember the details of what you shared.
This is why we refrain from telling people what to do in coaching. We activate their creative, generative brain! Creative insights are lasting, not temporary, and often build confidence in acting on new ideas. Change is sustainable, and you cultivate agile thinking and performing!
Save this post to refer back to when you need it. ❤️
That I’d like to examine from two perspectives—
From a Professional Coaching lens
This is wonderful advice from Marcia. It aligns so beautifully with her book—Coach the Person, Not the Problem – A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry.
If you are a professional coach, the advice is spot-on and incredibly useful. In fact, I’d say apply it in all of your professional coaching sessions.
From an Agile Coaching lens
But if you’re operating as an Agile Coach, then the advice, at best, needs to be taken situationally, with a grain of salt, and applied with care. And, at worst, it can be precisely the last thing you want to do with your client. It can harm them and also harm you.
That’s the danger here. Not in the advice itself. But in the situational context in which it can be applied. It almost appears binary—coaching good and telling bad. I think it’s much more subtle than that.
If I’m an under-skilled or inexperienced agile coach and I see this quote, it inspires me to adopt a professional coaching stance no matter the context. And in that context, the advice is wrong.
Wrapping Up
I guess the critical point in my writing is that Agile Coaching is a context (situational, complex, risky, nuanced, and multi-stance) endeavor that requires a bit more nuance than Coach vs. Tell.
And if you don’t have the experience to realize that, then you probably need a bit more experience.
Stay agile, my friends,
Bob.
Here’s a related post I shared in 2022, again inspired by Marcia—
https://www.agile-moose.com/blog/2022/3/20/when-to-coach-the-problem-versus-coaching-the-person