Written by They started their career at the software as a software developer and later on have been doing project management—other kinds of stuff before thinking of getting into the coaching kind of problem. So now they are providing answers to stakeholders and team members when they come to them with the questions, and these people are experts in solving those problems. So they give answers, and when they come to this coaching class, they start thinking of getting into the coaching space. They realize now they need to learn a skill where they focus on creating insight in other people’s minds so that person who is coming to you can discover the answer on his own.
Here this trouble starts because you have been providing solutions and now you need to help the other guy to discover the answer, and since the struggle, there is a question:-
How to do it, to this question, I have an answer. It is simple, do you know the solution whenever somebody comes to you with a problem. As you get into a senior job, do you see the answer or think you know the solution? If you reflect on this question, you may realize much time you think you know the solution because the problem you are solving right now is not as similar to what type of problem you have been solving before in your previous jobs.
People come to you with some technical problems, such as somebody getting an exception in their java or oracle code. So you tell him, How to debug the code, and the person makes that, and the exception gets resolved. It is where the game is over.
Now, this kind of problem has a very definitive solution. Another thing is this kind of solution also gets validated very fast. It works in two minutes or doesn’t have variability about the solution’s applicability. So, what type of problem are you solving now? As you start growing in your career, you start getting into more people and behavioral issues.
Somebody will come to you and ask, “how do I make my product owner write better user choice” or “how do I make my product owner collaborate with the development team.” So if you get these kinds of questions, can you give the other person a solution? You might think you can. You might have an experience of a similar issue. Still, this person’s area is a different one.
Another thing is that such behavioral problems, such kind of a people problem, are very adaptive. So here, you may apply a solution; the situation gets changed by that time, so the person chasing the solution was tracking the problem should also be adaptive in using the answer. So there is no one way of doing/solving a problem?
Now to fix it, the person who is applying the solution should be discovering the answer. In a coaching kind of area or space, it is recommended to help the other person find the solution. Now the question remains how do I stop myself from giving the solution? My answer is simple to start from a realization that you don’t have a solution. You might think you have it, you might have an experience, and you can share that experience by sharing that. I had this experience before, but it cannot be a definite solution for someone else because the other person has to solve it in his context.