When a coaching session comes up, coachees will often assume that the conversation with their coach needs to address something that feels important to them. They’ll expect that the work they’ll look into must either be complicated or emotionally noticeable.

While this may sometimes be true, it doesn’t need to be the rule. But it is if the coach is expected to provide solutions. Or if the coachee doesn’t see the coach as a partner.

It becomes apparent in the ways the coachee is prepared, and in the work the coach is invited to do.

There are many reasons why such a situation can come up. Whatever it is, it is a signal to both the coach and the coachee, that the work they want to do together is not happening.

They’ll have to inquire into the assumption that coaching is there to fix problems or must be inquiring into intense situations. It leads to the question of what the coachee aims to learn. Which then about his willingness to decide what this is and his ability to engage the coach in it. But naturally, it is also a question of how the work the coach is doing establishes itself as supportive of the coachee.