Years ago, while working on an action learning project with Imperial Chemical Industries, I met a remarkable fellow occupational psychologist, Sylvia Downs. At the time, I was experimenting with matching different learning methods to learning style preferences. I quickly realised that Sylvia was way ahead of me. She used an extraordinarily simple – yet profound – mnemonic to distinguish between different ways of learning; MUD. Facts need Memorising, concepts need Understanding, skills need Doing. I have never been able to better this. Her little book Making Learning Happen is full of good sense.

Sylvia has recently had her long and varied career celebrated by The British Psychological Society with a lifetime achievement award. Her acceptance speech was typically pragmatic and witty. Among others, she thanked her family for being her “research unit” and told how her daughter had particularly disliked discovery learning. Exasperated by not getting a straight answer to a question, her daughter used to shout, “Just tell me!”

Sylvia’s anecdote reminded me of my early attempts at coaching executives. At the time, I was stubbornly wedded to the non-directive approach, convinced that the “right way” was to act as a sounding board and help clients find their own answers to problems. Sticking rigidly to a non-directive approach sometimes worked, but often didn’t. Sanguine managers could be driven to distraction; they never actually shrieked, “Just tell me!”, but they should have done.

After a while, it dawned on me (not for the first time) that one size doesn’t fit all and I made a simple adjustment. I’d start coaching sessions by explaining my role and offering clients a choice. After briefing me on their problem they could:

1. Ask for my advice.
2. Tell me their preferred solution and ask for my reaction.
3. Ask me to help them explore possible ways forward.

The first assumed I was an expert with worthwhile advice to offer (very dodgy). The second assumed that I, as an uninvolved person, would be able to give some useful feedback (less dodgy). The third assumed that I was a helpful listener/facilitator (much safer).

Amusingly, it was noticeable that when clients opted for the first choice, my advice would invariably meet resistance. I’d then switch to the second and, if that didn’t do the trick, the third. This was better than stubbornly insisting on the third approach when clients believed, often mistakenly, that they wanted to be told what to do.