Picked up Marcia Reynolds' Coach the Person, Not the Problem on a recommendation I don't even remember getting anymore. Read it in two sittings, which for a book about coaching frameworks is either a compliment to her writing or a sign I needed to hear it more than I realized.
Her whole argument sits on one distinction. Most of what passes for coaching is actually just problem-solving with better questions. Somebody brings you an issue, you help them find a fix, everybody leaves satisfied. Reynolds calls that transactional, and she's not against it exactly. Just honest that it doesn't change much. The person walks out with a solution and the same beliefs that created the problem in the first place, fully intact, waiting to produce the next one.
What she's actually after is something she calls Reflective Inquiry.
The mechanics of it are simpler than the name suggests. You reflect a client's own words and emotions back at them, then ask a question that makes them look at what they just said instead of past it. Somebody says they're not sure they can lead the team. A transactional response fixes that, offers three leadership tips, moves on. Reynolds' response is closer to: you said you're uncertain about leading. What's underneath that. Not rhetorical. She actually wants an answer.
Five practices, roughly, hold the whole thing together.
Focus means coaching the person instead of the problem, which sounds like a tagline until you actually try to do it in a real conversation and realize how strong the pull is to just solve the thing in front of you. Active Replay is playing someone's own words back to them, which does something strange to people, hearing your own sentence said back to you lands differently than saying it. Brain Hacking is going after the belief underneath the problem rather than the problem itself, the actual treasure, in her words, sitting under everything. Goaltending keeps the conversation from drifting into a nice chat that never gets anywhere. New and Next is the part everyone skips, actually naming the insight out loud and committing to something specific because of it.
I recognized myself in the skipping part immediately.
I've had plenty of conversations, with people on my team, with myself honestly, that surface a real insight and then just evaporate because nobody said the next sentence out loud. The insight without the commitment is just a nice moment. Doesn't compound into anything.
The public speaking example she uses stuck with me. A transactional coach hands someone slide techniques and breathing exercises. A transformational coach asks what they actually believe happens if they mess up in front of a room, and usually there's something underneath that's been running the whole show for years, unexamined, older than the fear of public speaking itself.
I don't think this replaces problem-solving. Some problems genuinely just need a solution and everyone can go home. But I've started noticing, since reading this, how often I default to the fix when the more useful move would be a question I'm slightly afraid to ask, because it might take longer, or because it might surface something I don't know how to handle once it's out in the open.
Presence matters more than technique in all of this, from what I can tell. Being actually there in a conversation instead of half-formulating your next helpful suggestion while the other person is still talking. Harder than it sounds. I catch myself doing the second thing constantly, even writing this.
Worth reading if you manage people, or coach anyone informally, which is most of us more than we admit. The problem in front of you is rarely the actual problem. Usually just the one that finally got loud enough to mention.