Fill in the dots.

The amount of advice shared on how to do things is endless. Many of them build on the idea that the solution shared is the right and possibly even the only one.

It doesn’t matter what field it is. Sometimes the advice results from what one did oneself. Sometimes from what champions or those perceived as successful did.

It is the assumption that there is a model or method one can follow as is. However, it is an expectation that hardly can be fulfilled. While it often is useful to start with a template, it rarely is already the solution. There is more work to be done than simply copying what others do. It is needed to build awareness of how such a template works out for oneself.

Golf probably is the area where this becomes most visible to me. There is a school in golf that is all about copying what successful players do. Coaches using such an approach seek to have their coachee implement the same swing one of their golf heroes uses. Sometimes they might search for similarities in power, flexibility, and size between their coachee and a swing they see them capable of implementing. But it also is how far they’ll go with the individualization of their coaching.

Instead of assisting the coachee in becoming aware of the way he moves and what he’s trying to achieve, the focus stays on what he should be doing.

It’s easier to tell the coachee what to do than to help him become aware of how what he does contributes to what he’s achieving. But it is missing out on helping the coachee develop his autonomy. That is his ability to experiment and connect his doing with the result it generates.