I Don't Know (and that's OK!)

Coaching is the art of creating an environment, through ongoing conversation, that allows my clients to define and achieve their goals in the most fulfilling manner possible. As a coach, my most potent tool is the question.

People usually come to coaching with many versions of a core theme: “What I’m doing now isn’t working, and I want to do something else.” And because they have been around and around the racetrack of their own habitual thought patterns and keep coming up against a wall with no answers, they often assume in the beginning that the coach is the one who is going to supply the answers.

Instead of becoming “Mr. Answer Man”, I start asking questions, many of which people are able to answer right away. When I ask what brings them in, for example, they can usually define what their problem is in detail, because that’s what has been holding them back. They can talk easily about the bad boss, their problems with time management and organization, money problems, confusion about what they want to do with their lives.

But because they have come up empty of answers to the problem in their own minds so many times, when I start to ask questions that nudge them toward solutions instead of problems, they often look confused and say, “I don’t know”, and you can see their thought process run right into that wall one more time. They look at me as if to say, “Would I be here if I had the answer to that?”

I resist the unspoken plea for a quick answer, and instead circle around to asking the question again, and again, in as many ways as needed, until the client suddenly pops out with an idea: “Well, I guess I could do this or that…” and suddenly they are past the stuck place and the ideas for solutions start pouring out. You can see their release, feel their excitement, as they step through the wall into all the possibilities.

The philosophical foundation of coaching is the idea that people are already in possession of most of the wisdom, guidance and resources they need. No matter what the problem, we already have most of the puzzle pieces that we will ultimately need to move through a stuck place and create desired changes in our lives. We may not be aware of how much we have and know, but its there inside us as desires, ideas, thoughts and urges. And we almost always have untapped potential resources all around us in the form of people, organizations and events.

So when clients say, “I don’t know”, my job is not to give them ‘cheap’ answers – answers that are not theirs - but to draw out their inner wisdom and creativity with skillful questioning so they can reach that wondrous moment when suddenly there is a door in the wall. In coaching, “I don’t know” isn’t a place that lasts; it’s a prelude to, “Aha! Now I know!”