How do you know if a recipe is too sweet or too salty?
You add a little more.
You taste it.
Pinch by pinch, you adjust until it feels right.
Turns out, some of the best coaching works exactly like that.
Not with perfect recipes.
Not with fixed answers.
But with careful probing and tasting.
Someone asked me the other day:
“How do you know when to push a client toward growth… and when to give them more self-compassion, more grace, more rest?”
Exactly like you would cook an unfamiliar dish.
You don’t throw a whole chunk of salt in it.
You probe.
Question by question.
You taste until you hit the sweet spot.
The best coaching tool isn’t advice.
It’s questions.
Questions are your tasting spoon. Your calibration device. Your way of finding the next "perfect" action.
When I see a client being stuck in the mud, spinning the wheels, in indecision - choosing their next business or career move, where to draw the boundary between self-care and achievement, or simply not sure whether they need to change it's good enough,
Here are 4 questions, that are often used in coaching and therapy, I use, especially when someone feels stuck between changing and staying where they are:
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What could be good about changing?
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What could be good about not changing?
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What could be hard or bad about changing?
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What could be hard or bad about not changing?
These questions slow the rush. They surface ambivalence. They reveal truth without being forced into it. They give choice. They give awareness and understanding.
Another great one:
On a scale from 1 to 10, how ready/willing/able are you to take this next step?
Then ask:
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Why that number and not lower?
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Why not higher?
That’s where the gold is.
Just like with the recipe, where the perfect saltiness isn’t defined by the chef but by the eater, in coaching, the perfect next step isn’t defined by the coach but by the one living it - the client.
We all want the recipe. The plan. The certainty. It feels safe to believe there’s a clean path from here to there.
And the life is anything but a clean path.
So you poke.
You probe.
You try something small.
You reflect.
You adjust.
Pinch by pinch🧂
Over to you dear reader,
If you’re facing a need for change right now, are you waiting for someone else to hand you the recipe, where asking yourself the right questions is what you actually need?
