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How can we enable our clients to think for themselves? - Henley Business School Finland

How can we enable our clients to think for themselves?

Coaching clients to think is one thing. Coaching them to think for themselves is wholly another. The for themselves part changes the game. It moves the plates and it can turn our coaching inside out. It is worth it, though, because the quality of everything our clients do โ€“ everything โ€“ depends on the quality of the independent thinking they do first. Every plan, every decision, every action relies on the moments when our clients think for themselves โ€“ with rigour, imagination, courage and grace. Their independent thinking then becomes the basis of dialogue with others, in turn raising the quality of it all. This guide focuses on the ways in which the decision to generate our clientsโ€™ own finest thinking as far as possible can recast the way we coach.

Time for thinking

We have to face this first: most clients expect us to think for them, and most of us expect to do exactly that. Neither party says so, but the implicit coaching agreement is, observably, that our clients will think and talk for as long as it takes us to get a beat on their issue, and then we will act. Either we will take a note, or come in with a question of some sort โ€“ to clarify, to lead, to challenge, to propose.

The agreement is that as the coach we can distract or interrupt the clientโ€™s thinking whenever we deem valuable. We donโ€™t usually crash into the middle of their sentences (though shockingly some of us do), but it is we who are, nevertheless, the ones that determine when it is the right moment for the client to stop talking and for us to start.

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References

Brown, P (2012) Neuropsychology for Coaches. Open University Press
Kline, N (2015) More Time To Think. Cassell Publishers
McGilchrist, I (2011) The Master and His Emissary. Yale University Press
Stout-Rostron, S (2014) Leadership Coaching For Results. Knowres Publishing

Nancy is a tutor at the Henley Centre for Coaching, Henley Business School, UK, and author of Time to Think and More Time to Think. Nancy teaches coaches and leaders to become experts in creating thinking environments with their clients and their teams.

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