Coaching versus Consulting . . . How the ORID Framework Helped Me.

As a retired military officer, I had it all wrong. I thought coaching and consulting were the same thing. During my military career, being action oriented and having the ability to plan, problem solve, and execute was an expectation. The personal and professional development of my Officers and Sailors was also an expectation. So, upon reflection, it was easy to blur the lines between consulting and coaching because they were both part of my every day for over 20 years. 

Consulting is about problem solving at the team and individual level by injecting technical and operational expertise to help others resolve specific business issues or challenges to increase effectiveness and efficiency.  Coaching is about building capacity at the team or individual level by providing the insight, perspective, and accountability necessary to enlighten, empower, and equip others to think differently, behave differently, and to do differently to maximize performance either on a personal level or a professional level. 

One of the most helpful tools to aid me in my transition from a consultant to a coach was the ORID questioning framework from the Columbia Coaching Certification program.  The ORID framework provides four levels of questioning to encourage more focused and impactful conversations.  The four levels of the ORID framework are:  

- Objective:  questions about the EXTERNAL reality (facts) to provide contextual awareness.  What happened?

- Reflective: questions to call out the immediate INTERNAL reaction to an EXTERNAL reality (emotions, feelings, hidden images, and associations with the external reality) to continually raise one's contextual awareness. How are you feeling/ reacting?

- Interpretative: questions to draw out meaning, values, significance, and implications of the INTERNAL reaction to the EXTERNAL reality (insights, learnings, patterns of meaning) to provide conceptual clarity for increased focus and priority alignment. What does it mean? Why does it Matter? What's the Impact?

- Decisional:  questions to elicit action and resolution, to bring things to a close, and enable things to move forward (implications, decisions, and next steps) in an informed and deliberate manner. What's next? What's the most appropriate response? [i]  

My action-orientation is both a strength and a weakness and, as a result, I routinely found myself in the consulting space rather than the coaching space because I was only paying attention to the Objective and Decisional levels of the ORID framework which impacted my ability to have the increased contextual awareness and conceptual clarity necessary to truly empower others. The ORID framework is rooted in neuroscience and human behavior and, once I embraced its power, I saw the positive impacts in both my personal and professional life.  The ORID framework has positively changed the way I communicate and interact with others and has been an amazing instrument for positive change with my clients.  

How can you leverage the ORID framework in your conversations?  

[i] R. Brian Stanfield.  The Art of Focused Conversation:  100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace, pg. 18.