The Cleverest People I Coach Don’t Need Advice

Apparently I forgot to bring all the answers - It happens surprisingly often. Someone arrives apologising because they’re not quite sure what they need from the session, and there’s a moment where they look at me as though I might have a secret stash of clever answers tucked away somewhere. I’m always a little afraid to disappoint them, because I don’t. The truth is, the cleverest people I coach rarely need advice. They already have years of experience, they understand their organisations, they know their people, and they’ve usually thought about the problem from every possible angle before they even walk through the door.

What they’re missing isn’t intelligence — it’s thinking space. Space without emails popping up, without someone needing a decision, without the pressure to appear certain, and without the worry that today’s thoughts might be tomorrow’s performance review. It’s remarkable what happens when someone finally has permission to think out loud. A sentence begins, pauses halfway, silence settles for a moment, and then comes the quiet realisation: “Oh… that’s what this is really about.” That moment rarely arrives because I’ve said something particularly clever; it arrives because they’ve finally had uninterrupted room to hear themselves.

Coaching is often misunderstood. People imagine it’s about giving answers, but for me it’s much more about creating the conditions where people can discover their own. The answers were usually there all along — they’d simply been buried under meetings, deadlines and everyone else’s priorities.

So here’s today’s question: when was the last time you had an hour where nobody wanted anything from you except your thoughts.

#Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #ThinkingSpace #DecisionMaking #PeopleLeadership