Coachee is Always Right … Not!

“Ease is a greater threat to progress than any hardship” Denzel Washington

At the beginning of my coaching education I was introduced with the concept “coachee is always right”, or at least this is how I understood one of the coach-client dimensions. For the first several years my coaching style was “Mama Coach Approach”, meaning I was there for my clients to listen, to carefully ask open-ended question, to be empathetic and I was rarely challenging them. This approach, in general, worked OK but sometimes I felt frustrated as I was not allowing myself to be direct, when I felt that it might be a right way to help client to shift to the next level.

During my first coaching conference (Prague, 2008) I applied to be demo session leader and, surprisingly, I was selected. I was both happy and stressed. As you can see in the image below, I had small audience and that helped me to relax and enjoy the process more. After theoretical introduction, I ask who (from the participants) would be interested to be my client for the demo session. On my surprise, the most experienced person in the room raised her hand. I was new to the profession but I knew well who Julie Hay is. She set next to me and before we started she silently told me: “I am working on this topic for quite some time. Many way more experienced professionals worked with me on this topic and there is not progress, so don’t worry if there we don’t make progress today.”

What do you think how did I feel? You have one guess 😉

Session went way better than I expected, but I was not happy with my reaction on clients comment… Why did I agree? Why I accepted it? Why I didn’t challenge her?

Challenging coaching

Eye opening event happened 7 years latter. Same city, similar conference (instead of EMCC Conference, in 2015 I participated at ICF Coaching Conference), this time I was in the role of a speaker and beside myself one of the speakers was Dr John Blakey. His topic was “Challenging Coaching”.

What a relief was to hear another approach 🙂 John Blakey argues that there is too much bias towards non-directive coaching within the coaching community. Because of the strong link coaching has with the “sister” profession of psychotherapy and counselling, some coaches believe that coaching should be supportive and not challenging. The fact is that for the growth we need both support and challenge. Offering coachee experience of both qualities will raise the probability for triggering flow state. The flow mental state is generally less common during periods of relaxation and makes itself present during challenging and engaging activities.

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… the best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

There is more damage than benefit in aligning 100% with coachee’s worldview, in failing to challenge, inviting him/her to explore different perspective, or confronting them with the reality. This becomes visible when you work with clients who are working on important projects or are on high positions. These people need both support and challenge, and average coach offers only one of these two.

What we should challenge?

Today, my approach to coaching is that I fully accept coachee’s emotions and I challenge coachee’s logic. No matter if coachee has affirmative or negative opinion towards results he/she want to achieve, my job is to challenge the thinking, and invite client to make his / her own conclusions.

Another important thing is to confront coachee with both pleasant and unpleasant reality. Coaches (in general) lean towards positive outcomes and avoid exploring the negative. This approach can bring more damage than benefits. It is essential to start form the best possible outcome, but there is time and space where we need to confront coachee with possible obstacles and negative outcomes.

The big one is a topic of death. In many cultures death is not accepted as normal part of life. In my primary family saying something like “when I die …” is blasphemy. Living in denial is human, however for a big strategic life projects question of death is relevant one. Opening such question might be a wake-up call for coachee and can bring way more benefits than keep their focus only on the desired results.

As mentor coach I observe that almost all coaches in education struggle with challenging. Sometimes it looks that they just gave up on this one. Integrating challenging approach really raised my coaching to completely new level. My advice to all coaches in education is to take some time and make conscious effort to integrate this skill, it might not bring immediate pleasure to coachee but it will create more benefits than staying only in the support and positive thinking zone.

“Be sharp as knife but don’t cut”. John Blakey

If you are interested in deepening the knowledge on using challenges in coaching I recommend John’s book “Challenging Coaching“.

If you are interested to join our 6th Regional Coaching Conference – ReStart: Mind, Hear & PR (Belgrade, 29th of March 2023, Hotel Hyatt) check this link.