Does it sometimes happen to you that you coach someone who does not know what they want?

We know that having clear goals in coaching is very important. If it is absent, we are in trouble. Coaching means to go from the present to a more desirable future. If our team member (or coachee) does not know where they want to go, we need a technique to help them uncover or formulate it.

We do not want to respond as an advisor because we lose most of the impact we can have as a coach. We know that once we share our own ideas, they are not theirs anymore. Accountability and commitment suffer.

What I propose here is to use a little human psychology. In particular, negativity bias. If someone says to you “I don’t know what I want”, try responding by asking “what do you not want?”

Slightly sheepish approach. Interesting things can happen when you do this.

For example, let’s say you are a manager and you are in a 1-1 with your team member.

It frustrates your team member how the regular meetings with another team go. You ask him: “So what do you want to change about it?”. And all you get back is “I don’t know. I was hoping you can help me figure something out.”

In that kind of moment, it tempts us to switch to advising mode. Let’s not do that. There is something else we can do.

When we rely on negativity bias, you will first ask “So what specifically do you not want about this meeting anymore?”

Likely, you will get a torrent of specific, annoying details. Note those, for example:

1. “I don’t like all the finger-pointing between people!”

2. “I don’t like James and Anna to consume all the meeting most of the times!”

3. “We never seem to get through all the agenda points.”

So what do you do with this kind of responses? You will use one of the most powerful questions there is: “What would you like to have happen instead?” Here, you will ask a specific version.

1. “So what exactly would you like to see happening instead of all the finger-pointing?”

2. “What would you like to see instead of James and Anna consuming the entire meeting?”

3. “What would you like to have happen instead of never getting through all the agenda points?”

While these questions sound like no-brainers, they are not rhetoric questions. You fully expect an answer. The beauty is, the answers you will get is in most cases exactly what people want.

1. “Well, instead of the finger-pointing, I would like people to take responsibility and own the actual tasks.”

2. “Well, instead of only James and Anna I would like to see fair participation of the entire group in the long run.”

3. “Well, I am a realist. I know we might not always get through all the points, but failure should not be our starting expectation. And it feels like, right now it is. So, I would like to see that we change our mindset here and take our agendas seriously.”

Now, it rarely works as beautifully and clean as this, but the technique itself is sound. If the person in front of you ignores your question and keeps complaining about what they not want, then they might not be ready for coaching. And this is useful information to have.

In fact, we can be relentless here. “What would you like to have happen instead” is a serious medicine against many of the complainers out there. Why? It’s nearly impossible to reject the question. Rejecting it would mean to admit the own negative attitude.

However, what if you still encounter someone who does not respond to the question and remains stuck in the negative? Let go. At least for now. Sometimes people simply need to vent and are not ready for coaching.

With these responses, we roughly shaped their solution we want to achieve. Now we can ask our team member how they want to get there.

1. “What can you do to help people take a little more responsibility in this meeting? What influence do you have here?” Or “In one of those meetings, when people took a bit of responsibility in the past, what was different?”

2. “When you say fair participation, what do you mean by fair? How would you know participation has improved? What could be a small sign?”

3. “What kind of behaviours which show you that the mindset has changed? What kind of seriousness is that seriousness?”

For most people, it is useful to have someone who points them towards what they want to achieve. It is too easy for all of us to get stuck in our problems and not take the time to define what we want.

I used this post to introduce a technique to help others formulate their specific goals. It may almost feel like magic. We rely on negativity bias, in a simple process:

1. When someone says: “I don’t know what I want”

2. Then you respond by asking: “Ok, fair enough. But tell me, based on what you know, what specifically do you NOT want?”

3. Once you got their answer: “I see. So what I hear is that you don‘t want X. I am curious, what would you like to have/see instead of X?”

4. Then based on this, we should have some future-focused goal, ideally specific.

Now you can coach! For example, you can ask, ‘so based on the situation today with this meeting, and what you would like to have instead, what’s in your control?”

This can be a precious element in your toolkit as a coach.

So, from now on, when a team member tells you they don’t know what they want, don’t give up. Find out first what they do not want. More likely, you will get useful answers.