The Leadership Discipline of Not Knowing

Human beings are exceptionally good at reading one another. We listen to a few words, notice a shift in tone, watch an expression, and draw conclusions about what someone wants, needs, fears, or intends.

Most of the time, we get reasonably close. We have to. This is how we live and work together.

And it is often how we lead.

Leaders are rewarded for recognizing patterns, anticipating needs, and making sense of incomplete information. Over time, we become increasingly confident in our ability to understand people. We hear someone describe a problem and think, I know what is happening here. I know what they need.

But when we coach, we practice a completely different way of being with another person.

We let go of knowing.

This does not mean we stop having thoughts, interpretations, or hypotheses. That would be nearly impossible. It means we stop treating those interpretations as authoritative. We set aside what we think we know so we can hear what the other person is actually saying through their words, emotions, perspectives, and even their uncertainty.

That is what makes coaching deceptively simple and profoundly difficult.

The practical discipline is to notice the moment you reach a conclusion. When you hear yourself thinking, What they really want is… pause. Release the conclusion and return to the person.

Ask:

• What is it about that that matters to you?
• What would that make possible?
• What do you notice as you say that?
• What do you want now?

These questions are not tools for confirming what you already believe. They are invitations to discovery.

As the person searches for language, something important happens: they hear themselves. Thoughts that were vague become visible. Emotions become informative. Wants that seemed obvious become clearer, deeper, or sometimes entirely different.

The leader has not supplied the answer. The leader has created the conditions in which the answer can emerge.

That may be the unique power of coaching. We temporarily relinquish what we think we know about another person so they can come to know themselves more fully.

Sometimes the greatest obstacle to that discovery is not getting someone wrong. It is getting them approximately right too quickly.