Coaching Isn’t About Giving You The Answers
One of the biggest misunderstandings about coaching – especially business coaching – is the assumption that a coach is there to tell you what to do. “How will you know my business better than me?” – We won’t!
Sure, we can do that. If you really don’t know something and you ask for advice, we’ll give it. But here’s the rub: if we just keep handing you answers, you’re not actually learning. You’re outsourcing your thinking. And that’s a fast track to dependency, not development.
The goal of coaching isn’t to make you reliant on someone else to solve your problems. It’s to build your own capacity to think better, lead better, and make decisions with clarity and confidence. That way, when the next challenge comes up (and it will), you don’t need to phone a friend – you already have the tools to figure it out.
It’s the old “teach a man to fish” analogy. Give someone a fish and they eat for a day. Teach them to fish, and they can feed themselves for life. In business coaching, the “fishing” is about developing decision-making frameworks, building awareness, questioning assumptions, and taking responsibility for results.
That’s why coaching looks and feels very different to training or facilitation. If you’ve ever sat through a training session, you probably heard the trainer do most of the talking, explaining processes or sharing expertise. A facilitator, meanwhile, guides a group to explore a topic together, drawing out insights from everyone.
Coaching is quieter, deeper, and often more uncomfortable. It’s about powerful questions, not easy answers. It’s about holding a mirror up, not offering a whiteboard of bullet points. But having said that, a really good business coach will switch seamlessly between these: Challenging your thinking, facilitating brainstorming with your team, providing team training where needed, acting as a sounding board, and, when needed, giving advice.
Here’s a quick summary to show the difference:
So, no – we’re not just here to give you answers. We’re here to help you build the muscles to find your own. And trust me: the long-term ROI of coaching is much better than just advice or training alone.
