The Coaching Rule I Keep Breaking

I'm still relatively "young" as a life coach, and there are a few recurring issues that bother me. One of them started with something really simple: when people hear the word "coach", what do they actually think a coach does?

If you think about a sports coach, swimming coach, vocal coach or fitness coach, the assumption is usually straightforward. They know more than you do, and you go to them because they can point out what could be better, teach you something and help you improve. So I can understand why people might come into life coaching expecting the same thing. They are looking for help with something and assume the coach will have some answers.

Except life coaching works differently. In the coaching framework I was trained in, the life coach is not supposed to be the expert on your life. You are. The job is to ask good questions, help you think things through, challenge your assumptions and help you arrive at your own answers. I understand the principle but I am not sure following it too rigidly always serves the client.

What if the client genuinely doesn't have the answer? We all don't know what we don't know, right? A recent client wanted to leave corporate life but had no idea what else she could do. I could have guided her to uncover what kind of work she enjoys, what she is naturally good at, what she wants her working life to look like, what she no longer wants, and so on. Pretty standard coaching stuff which is helpful. But what if there are other options that would probably suit her very well and she has simply never heard of it? She can't come up with an option that she doesn't know exists. And if I knew, of course I can help her recognise that there is a gap. I can ask where she might go to find out more, and she can do the research, come back, talk through what she has found and slowly narrow things down. There is value in that discovery process.

But if I already know something that could help, I keep asking myself why I should make her go one big round to find it. Most of the people I meet are already short of time. If they come to a life coach because they feel stuck, they want to make progress. I can easily imagine a client eventually thinking:

"So you knew this? Why did you make me spend two weeks on something you could have told me in two minutes?"

Big sighs. Sometimes I wonder whether we are serving the client or serving the method.

There is another awkward moment that comes up often. A client will look at me and ask, "What do you think?" Then I am stuck. Do I dodge the question and throw another “reflective” question back at them? Do I say that what I think doesn’t matter? Do I explain that I'm not supposed to give my opinion because by doing so I risk skewing their judgement? Do I tell them that my job is to ask questions and not to answer them? Tbh, that sounds ridiculous and it can feel rude when someone has directly asked for my view. If a client is asking me what I think, they clearly see some value in hearing my perspective. Once I give it, though, am I still coaching?

Another client I spoke with was about to make an investment in his business. I knew a few things that might help him avoid some costly mistakes. Do I share them with him, or keep them to myself even if they could be useful?

I’ve tried asking the client mid-session if I can step out of coaching mode for a moment to share something from my own experience, then let them decide whether it is useful before I step back into coaching. But honestly, I find myself doing this more often than I’d like to admit.

Is this the norm? I don't know. The moment I start bringing in my own lived experience, I hear that guilt-tripping voice in my head saying, "This is not the ICF way." Then I see the line between coaching, mentoring and advising starts to blur. By definition, coaching, mentoring, counselling and consulting are different things. But in a real conversation, it’s a lot messier and what the client needs can overlap.

I don't want to hand out advice simply because something worked for me, or assume that my experience is the answer to someone else's problem. But I also find it difficult to believe that being a good coach always means responding with yet another question.

I'd genuinely like to hear from the more experienced coaches out there. How do you handle this in practice? Do you stay strictly within the coaching role, or do you move into mentoring or advising when you believe it would genuinely help the client? And if you do, where do you draw the line?