Be responsible with the advice you give - coaching business

Being a life coach is a job that implies a great responsibility. Although we are not health professionals, our work focuses on sensitive issues that can profoundly influence the personal and professional growth of those who place their trust in us. Life coaching must be carried out with a strong commitment to ethics, humanism and responsibility. A wrong decision on our part can have significant repercussions in the lives of our clients, therefore, it is essential to consider several factors before offering advice, strategy or action.

During the course of this guide we will be exploring some of the fundamental concepts that you should take into account before giving advice to your clients, so that you can be as responsible as possible with the decisions you make and the indications you give.

When in doubt, it is better not to act

The coach, being human, can also have insecurities, no matter how well prepared he is in his field. These doubts are a reflection of the absence of certain knowledge regarding a specific fact. The best way to understand how we should act in the presence of doubts is to think as a doctor does. It is inadmissible the idea that a doctor would take the risk of guiding a treatment if he is not sure of the diagnosis he has made.

Just as a doctor does not act until he has a clear diagnosis, you should limit your recommendations until you understand the exact dimension of the problem you are dealing with and the profile of the client you are dealing with. This is why it is recommended that you delve deeply enough into the client during the discovery sessions. These sessions are to the coach what a diagnosis is to the doctor. Guiding wrong advice and actions is worse than stopping and taking enough time to develop strategies that are consistent with the problem we are dealing with.

If the problem exceeds your capabilities, reject it.

It is essential to have the humility to recognize when a client comes to us with a problem that exceeds our capabilities. If we know in advance that we are not sufficiently prepared to contribute to the satisfaction of the client's interests, we should reject the case without hesitation.

From an ethical point of view, we should not admit a client if we are not able to generate a value for the payment that he/she will make for our services, worse than what we have just mentioned, is to risk to guide him/her a series of actions without any certainty that they will be beneficial for him/her, since this could trigger undesired adverse effects, which could damage even more the client's current state.

Follow up the advice you give with the proper follow-up.

We all make mistakes, no matter what profession we are in, the important thing is to recognize and accept them when we make them. That is why you should always be prepared to correct a strategy if the situation warrants it. Once you give advice, you cannot disengage from the case without knowing the real effects it has had on your client. Try to adequately follow up on each of the orientations you give to evaluate if they should be corrected, complemented with others, or if they are indeed correct for the objectives being pursued.

Following up on the actions proposed to the client is a clear sign of responsibility and respect for your work, which will be well perceived by your clientele.