The Hidden Cost of Sharing the “Obvious” Solution

My own expertise can fool me.

I thought that spotting a logical pattern in someone's behaviour was the ultimate sign of professional listening. If I saw the "obvious" solution, I felt an overwhelming desire to share it.

But that is a trap.

Think of the mirrors in a gym. They do not lift the weights for you. They merely reflect your posture. Assessment tools and analytical logic work exactly the same way. They exist solely to adjust my understanding of the context, not to evaluate the person in front of me.

Coaching is the mirror.

If I hand over a ready-made conclusion, I steal clients' opportunity to build mental muscle. Until the individual verbalises the insight themselves, my "brilliant observation" is nothing more than a phantom. The goal is not to deliver answers, but to ask the precise questions that enable them to arrive at the realisation on their own.

How often do you hold back your "obvious" solutions to let someone else do the heavy lifting?

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