Helping your clients avoid predictable and known mistakes...
In?The Death of Expertise, Tom Nichols shares:
“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.”?- Werner Heisenberg
And
“An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”?- Niels Bohr
A big part of the value you bring to your clients and to your work is the fact that you’ve been around long enough?to know what not to do.
As you are probably aware by now, a big part of my coaching style and philosophy is to empower my clients to make their own decisions, instead of telling them what to do (which is consulting, not coaching).
I do believe that there are some allowable mistakes that your clients have to make in order for them to learn and grow.?
However, this has to be tempered with the fact that they are hiring you to help them avoid the most common mistakes so they can get there faster and in a better state than someone who is trying to do it on their own without a coach.
So, how can you simultaneously empower your clients, create self-discovery, lead with genuine curiosity?and?somehow help your clients avoid the most common mistakes??
The coaching statements or phrases that I find to be useful are:
领英推荐
And if you believe they could self-discover the problems:
In other words, the value we bring is the fact that we are always many steps ahead of our clients at all times and, based on our experience, we can predict what could go wrong.
We don’t drop our empowering coaching style, but we do help them see what could happen if we go down this road. We can now let them use this new information to make better and more informed decisions, thus avoiding predictable and known mistakes.
DFTBA!
Chris.
PS.?If you'd like a weekly letter and more coaching resources/tips from me, go ahead and?subscribe to my weekly letter?that lands in your inbox every Thursday.
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