NEVER EXCHANGE YOUR ADVICE FOR THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

Last week we learned one valuable lesson in why you need to be coached. That is believing in people and believing that God is at work in their lives; thus coaching them to come up with a formula to solve their own problems. Letting them take ownership for their own solutions and not blaming you after advising them and things fail to go the way they expected and that is what will look at today.

 I will never forget one Sunday morning when as Pastors we were praying for people before the Sunday service and this young man who had been jobless for a long time came and asked me for advice on whether or not to take up a certain job he had been offered at a Bear distribution center. I was at a loss as to what to tell him. I knew that he had been jobless for a long time and was really in need of a job. On the other hand I could see that he was struggling with the idea of taking up that job based on his religious convictions. 

I prayed that God would give him the wisdom to make the right choice and refrained from giving him any advice. That was hard for me, I had to die to myself and trust that God would show this man what to do. That week on Tuesday, the young man called me and informed me that he had decided not to take up the job because his religious convictions would not allow him to do so. I breathed a sigh of relief and was happy for him. I sensed such a peace and joy, a sense of achievement in his heart as he relayed that information to me. 

What this person did was that they came up with the solution to their own problem. They thus took ownership of it as opposed to me giving them a solution.If I told him to take the job and latter on he realized that he was conflicted because of his convictions, he would have blamed me for it. If on the other hand I advised him not to, when things got hard for him financially he would have blamed me for his misfortunes. But I am glad he came up with that decision himself. 

From that day I discovered something that I later came to learn as very crucial in coaching, “Never exchange your advice for someone else responsibility.” Mine as a Coach was to help him by giving him a broader perspective of the issue at hand, asking him powerful questions that would help him think through the whole issue instead of telling him what to do. That is what a Coach is there for in your life.