“What do you think I could do?”
It is a perfectly legitimate question.
The answer depends a great deal on the role I have in that conversation.
If I am the consultant, I may have been brought in precisely for my perspective and experience.
If I am the coach, the situation is different.
The distinction matters more than it may seem.
When consulting can be useful
Sometimes the problem is relatively simple: you do not know something that someone else knows. You need expertise.
How do we build the commercial process? How do we reorganise the team? How do we implement a CRM? How do we structure a KPI system?
In this context, a consultant can analyse the situation and propose solutions.
Much of the value comes from their experience and expertise.
It would be rather absurd to bring in an expert for their experience and have them answer every question with: “What do you think?”
When coaching can be useful
There are situations where the problem is not the lack of an external solution. You may already have three.
The difficulty may be the choice, the way your role influences the decision, a conversation you are avoiding, or the fact that you have tried the same solution several times and keep getting the same result.
An expert answer may be interesting here, but it may not be enough.
You will live with the decision. You will have the conversation. You will keep working in the system after the meeting ends.
In coaching, responsibility does not move to the coach. It remains with the client.
“But the coach has experience. Why not tell me?”
It is a good question.
A coach does not lose their professional experience when entering a coaching conversation. They can, however, be very deliberate about how they use it.
There is a difference between “I noticed something. Would you like to explore it?” and “I have seen this before. I would do this.”
In the first version, experience can support the conversation. In the second, the conversation is already moving towards consulting or mentoring.
There is nothing wrong with that if both people are clear about the process taking place.
Confusion appears when we call something coaching while it operates mainly as advice giving.
From idea to practice
Want to put the idea into practice?
Explore coaching optionsSometimes you need both. They are simply different conversations.
A manager may need consulting to build a sales process and coaching for the way they lead the team that applies it.
An entrepreneur may need a financial specialist for the numbers and a coach for a decision they have postponed for six months.
The processes can complement each other. It helps to know which conversation you are in.
Otherwise confusion arrives quickly. The client expects an answer while the coach is creating space for exploration.
Forty minutes later, both people are mildly irritated and neither knows exactly why.
Three simple questions
When it is unclear which kind of help might fit better, I would start here:
Am I missing expertise or am I missing clarity?
If someone experienced offered me a very good solution, would I be able and willing to apply it?
Is the problem in the system, or in the way I am functioning inside that system?
These are not perfect diagnostics. They can still orient the conversation.
What happens in executive coaching
In executive coaching, Bogdan does not enter the conversation to make the decision for the client.
The starting point is the real situation: a decision, a role, a professional relationship, a period of change or an obstacle.
From there, the conversation can make the problem, assumptions, options and what can be tested differently in practice more visible.
Sometimes the outcome is a decision. Sometimes it is a conversation. Sometimes it is discovering that the question you arrived with was not actually the important one.
Coaching is not always the answer. Neither is consulting.
The useful part is not choosing the tool before understanding the problem.
Perhaps the useful question is not “Which one is better?” but “What kind of problem am I trying to solve?”
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