Posted on October 13, 2009 by Stephan Wiedner

Have you ever tried giving advice to a teenager? If you haven’t, you can imagine that everything you say is going to go in one ear and out the other. Of course rebellious teenagers are an extreme case but most people don’t respond to unsolicited advice. It’s a waste of good intentions.

In order to save you some effort, here are 3 tips for giving advice when you are coaching someone. But first, you may want to read this article I recently wrote distinguishing the difference between a coach and an advisor. I shared it on the International Coach Federation discussion group on LinkedIn and a number of seasoned coaches commented with their wisdom and experience.

Just to be clear, at a fundamental level, coaching is not about giving advice. It is about asking questions and engaging the coachee in discovering their own solutions. But coaching doesn’t always work that way. Every now and again, you will have a nugget of information that can really help a client and here are some helpful tips to get your message across.

Tip 1: Switch between a coaching “hat” and an advisor “hat”

As previously mentioned, coaching is primarily focused on asking questions and wearing your coaching “hat”. When the conversations leads to a great opportunity for you to share advice, it helps to be clear that you are going to switch to an advice-giving “hat”. Make sure you know the difference.

When you switch to an advice-giving hat, the coachee may no longer be using their active thinking and will zone out. Look for signs that the coachee is not really listening or paying attention. If they are not engaged in what you are saying, it will be a waste.

Tip 2: Be transparent when you are switching “hats”

If you are going to be switching “hats” and giving advice, it never hurts to be completely transparent with the coachee. Say things like “I am going to take off my coaching hat for a minute. I want to share a personal experience with you.” Being transparent like this gives the coachee the ability to ready themselves for your story or advice.

For fun, you can actually switch hats, for real. You may have a sun hat that is perfect for coaching and a scholarly hat for giving advice. Whatever hats work for you. Have fun with it.

Tip 3: Give advice from your own experience

Nobody likes a know-it-all. If you are going to give advice, try to limit your advice to your personal experiences, good or bad. Avoid quoting a $100 text book you barely read in University 15 years ago.

For example, consider saying things like “I haven’t done what you are trying to do but I did try something similar and here’s what I discovered” or “When I tried that, here’s what I learned”.

Bonus Tip: Notice when you are working too hard

If you are working really hard for the coachee to get your brilliant advice and they just don’t get it, take off your advice-giving hat. Don’t bother. Switch to your coaching hat and engage their active thinking brain. Ask some simple questions like:

• What do you want?
• What do you think are the next steps? or
• What are you learning?

Let the coachee do all the hard work. Surprisingly, they’ll get more value from it.