The Coach Doesn't Have the Answers — And That's the Point

I spent twenty years being the person with the answers. That's the job. A staff member has a problem, a board has a question, a parent is upset — they come to the superintendent's office because they expect someone in that chair to know what to do.

So when I started building an executive coaching practice, I assumed the switch would be simple. Trade one kind of expertise for another. Instead of answering “what do we do about the boiler,” I'd answer “what do we do about your leadership.” Same chair, different questions.

I was wrong, and I'm glad I was.

I asked a group of executive coaches which role most closely described their work — educator, therapist, or priest. The answers were surprising.

While working on my dissertation, I asked a group of executive coaches which role most closely described their work — educator, therapist, or priest. They dismissed therapist quickly: they're not there to heal anyone. Priest split the room; a few liked the confessional quality, but most bristled at the idea they held some secret wisdom to hand down. If you pushed them, most landed on educator — but they were quick to clarify what kind. Not a sage on the stage with knowledge to pass along. More like a doctoral committee chair walking you through the process. The chair doesn't write it for you. By the end, you know things they don't.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A coach who hands you the answer is doing something — but it isn't coaching. It's consulting, or mentoring, or just telling you what they'd do. And what they'd do worked for them, in their context, with their staff, their board, their history. It might not be yours to use.

I think about this every time someone brings up the year I moved our elementary schools to attendance centers. I know the issues someone facing that decision today will have to overcome. But the answer I made belongs to that year, that community, that version of me. The real work of coaching isn't handing someone a decision. It's building the muscle they'll need for the next hundred decisions I won't be there for.

There's a researcher named Jack Mezirow who spent decades studying how adults actually change — not by being told, but by encountering something disorienting, sitting with it honestly, and talking it through until a shift happens. This is transformational learning.  Mbokota and his colleagues explored this process in the setting of executive coaching.  They found that it does follow this trajectory but one more step matters as much as the rest: acceptance. If the person being coached doesn't come to believe they need to change, no amo

unt of good advice will move them. You can bring the horse to water. The horse still has to drink — and unlike a horse, this one gets to argue with you about it first.

That's the tension I try to hold in every engagement: bring real structure, real accountability, a coach who's actually sat in your chair — and still leave the driving to you. You are, and will remain, in control of your own development. My job is to make sure that control is worth having.

If that's the kind of partner you're looking for as you step into — or grow into — leadership, I'd like to talk.