Why Great Coaches Say Less: When Not to Answer, Fix, or Correct
The instinct that made you a good coach is the same one that gets in the client's way.
The Short Answer: Restraint isn't passivity, and it isn't withholding. It's trusting the client to reach it themselves. The urge to answer, fix, or correct usually serves the coach, not the client.
The session where we stayed quiet, and the client still found their answer
There is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing what you think someone else cannot. You hear the contradiction. You notice the pattern. You are fairly certain you know where this is going. And you have thoughts.
For many of us, this started long before coaching. We were the people others came to. We listened. We noticed things. We connected dots. We could see three steps ahead and, if we are honest, we were often pretty good at it. Then we became coaches, and somewhere along the way, the question changed. It was no longer simply, “What do I see?” It became, “What am I going to do with what I see?”
The more experienced we become, the more complicated this gets. We really do hear more. We recognize patterns faster. We notice the hesitation, the contradiction, the sentence that suddenly changes direction. Sometimes we may even be right, which is exactly where the trouble starts.
And sometimes, as good as we are, we can’t see the forest for the trees.
Dan remembers one session like this.
I remember the session clearly. My client was all over the place, and I wasn’t tracking.
Normally, I’m pretty good at finding patterns, noticing connections, and hearing the unsaid. But not on this one.
We were 40 minutes into our session and I had no idea what we were talking about, much less how I was going to wrap up the conversation with any value in the next 20 minutes.
That’s when they just stopped talking.
Then they said, “Oh…….” as their eyes popped open and their shoulders dropped.
“Thanks! I would have never figured that out without you!”
But I felt like I hadn’t done a thing. Now I know better.
Why do clients ask for the coach’s opinion, but not the truth?
Because they want validation for their perspective. The ‘truth’ might conflict with their desire for confirmation bias.
Many new coaches enter the field thinking that they’re going to tell a client how to change their life. Their friends have told them what a great advice-giver they are, and they think, “I’m gonna get paid for that!” after seeing a Tony Robbins video.
What they haven’t yet realized is two-fold. First, their friends, the ones who commend their advice-giving, have already pre-selected them for that exact piece of advice. It’s a 100% hit rate, better than most psychics. Second, coaching isn’t about telling, directing, and offering advice. It’s about listening, being very, very curious, and ultimately realizing you don’t have answers, only perspectives.
A variation of that idea hits even us seasoned coaches. We’ve built relationships with our clients over time. We know their patterns. We remember the thing they said six months ago. We hear the tiny shift in tone because we know what their voice sounds like when something lands. We’re partnering with them. Aren’t they expecting us to share our opinions?
And sometimes, if we are honest, we want to. Not because we forgot how coaching works, but because we know them. Or at least we think we do.
That is a very different temptation from the new coach who simply wants to give advice. Experience gives us evidence. We have seen things. We have heard versions of this before. Our instincts have been right enough times that we have learned to trust them. Maybe that is exactly when we need to get a little suspicious of ourselves.
When we hear that question in our heads, that’s the moment to pause and ask, “Am I wanting to offer this for them, or for me? Who does it serve to share this?”
Why do some people complain but never change?
Complaining is familiar territory. Change is scary for most people. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
We have all had the conversation that comes back. Same boss. Same relationship. Same boundary. Same decision that was absolutely, definitely going to be made this time. And then it isn’t.
At first, we stay curious. Then we stay curious again. Somewhere around another lap of the same conversation, we may notice that we have quietly started wanting the change more than they do. This is where it gets uncomfortable, because we can make our impatience sound very noble. We believe in them. We see their potential. We know they deserve better. All possibly true.
What is also possibly true? We are tired of talking about it.
Maybe they’re not ready.
Maybe the familiar misery is still doing something for them. (hashtag secondary payoff)
Maybe what looks obvious from our chair feels completely different from theirs.
Or maybe we have become attached to movement because movement reassures us that the coaching is working.
That one stings a little.
Sometimes the question is not, “Why won’t they change?” Sometimes it is, “Why is their lack of change bothering us so much?”
When is it better to let a client be wrong?
When it gives the client room and authority to learn from their own choices. As long as they are not putting themselves or others in danger by making that choice.
A few deeper questions rise up here. Who’s to say what “wrong” or “right” is? Are we, as the coach, defining it from our perspective of what we think the client should do? Underneath that, what is driving our desire to prevent the failure we think we see coming?
Ask yourself those questions. Take your time. We’ll wait.
Because sometimes we can see the cliff. Or at least we think we can. The client is about to send the email, take the job, leave the job, go back, walk away, say yes, or say no. And we are sitting there thinking, “Please do not do this.”
Of course, we probably use more sophisticated language in our own heads. But still. “Please do not do this.”
Here is the irritating part. We may be wrong. The thing we are so certain is a mistake may lead somewhere we cannot see. The choice we would never make may be exactly the choice they need to make.
And even more irritating? We may be right. They may make the choice. It may go badly. Six months later, they may arrive at the exact realization we could see coming from the beginning.
So what?
That is the part we do not talk about enough. Being right does not automatically make the realization ours to deliver. Can we stay curious when we are convinced? Can we sit beside a decision we would never make? Can we let a client discover something on Tuesday that we were fairly certain about last Thursday?
That may be where restraint gets real. Not when we have nothing to say, but when we have plenty.
Why is saying less a presence skill, not passivity?
Because original thoughts generate in silence, not in noise.
There is a huge difference between not speaking up due to concern over how it may be received, which is passivity, and maintaining a silence that becomes a creative space, which is presence.
Dan returns to the session he mentioned earlier:
Had I interrupted my client to ask a question, even if it was just for clarity, I would have broken their processing and robbed them of the insight that ultimately landed.
I wasn’t intentionally practicing silent presence in that moment. Or maybe I was and didn’t know it. I do know that I was aware of my confusion and was a bit attached to our remaining time.
That returns us to the question posed earlier: “Who does it serve to ask this question?”
Because silence can get very loud for the coach. The client stops talking. We wait. A few seconds pass, and suddenly we become aware of everything. The clock. The remaining time. The fact that we have no idea where this is going. The question we could ask. The better question we could ask. The really impressive question we just thought of.
And maybe the internet froze.
Silence has a way of showing us just how attached we are to doing something. A question can be excellent and still be too early. An observation can be accurate and still not belong in the moment. Even curiosity can become interference.
That is harder to admit because curiosity is one of our good words. We are coaches. We are supposed to be curious. But sometimes we are not asking because the client needs the question. Sometimes we are asking because we need to know.
Who does it serve?
There it is again.
The quiet wasn’t absence. It was the work.
Dan thought he hadn’t done anything. No pattern found. No connection made. No brilliant question that changed the room. And yet the client found something.
Maybe that is what makes restraint so difficult for experienced coaches. We have spent years getting better at noticing, listening, and hearing what sits underneath the words. Then comes the harder work of realizing that not everything we notice needs to be said. Not every pattern needs to be named. Not every silence needs our help.
The instinct that made us good coaches is not the problem. Our attachment to using it might be.
Sometimes the client does not need our answer.
Sometimes they do not even need our question.
Sometimes they need enough room to hear what was already happening before we interrupted it.
The best coaching conversations rarely end with an answer. Neither do ours.
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MCXI Institute | Daniel Olexa and Monselete Bowden
