A Coach’s Secret to Hearing Those Three Little Words
“Yes, you’re right.” It’s probably the most common piece of feedback I get as a coach. And before you roll your eyes and think I’m about to toot my own horn, let me explain the little twist in this story.
My coaching approach isn’t about handing out answers or telling people what to do. It’s all about asking the right questions. I prod, I poke, I share stories, and I hold space for people to figure out their own truths. And yet, time and time again, I hear clients say, “Yes, Adam, you’re right,” as if I’ve bestowed some grand wisdom upon them.
The funny and rather heartwarming part of this is that it’s not about me being right at all. It’s about them uncovering their own answers through the conversation. They do the work, they find the clarity, and then they attribute that newfound insight back to me with a smile. It’s a bit like a comedic dance where I’m just holding the mirror, and they’re the ones seeing their own reflection more clearly.
For instance, imagine a small business owner in Bristol who’s wrestling with their finances. They come into a session feeling overwhelmed, convinced they’re just not “numbers people.” Through a series of questions, we explore what’s really going on. By the end of the conversation, they’ve realised that actually, yes, they do understand the basics. They just needed the right prompts to trust their own instincts. And then they say, “Oh, you’re right, Adam,” when really they’ve uncovered that confidence themselves.
Or take another example, a team leader from Llanelli who’s struggling to get their small team on board with marketing a new service. They come in thinking they just don’t have the right pitch. We chat, I ask them about what they believe in, what their customers actually want, and they end up discovering their own way to tell the story. Again, they laugh and say, “You’re right,” when in fact they’ve just found their own clarity through a bit of guided conversation.
And one more, maybe it’s someone in Manchester who’s had a crisis of confidence in sales. They think they can’t sell, that they’re just not cut out for it. But through our chat, they piece together that they’ve been selling ideas to their team all along, just in a different way. By the end, they go, “You know what, you’re right,” but really they’ve just realised they had it in them all along.
In all these little stories, the theme is the same: it’s not about me being right. It’s about helping them see that they’re right, that they have their very best answers and all we need at times is permission to see it and feel it, space held long enough for us to stop from the busyness of the world and someone to ask us questions, listen and poke around a bit. And it’s a joy every time it happens.
So this article is a little tribute to that process. It’s a celebration of the fact that the best answers usually come from within and that my role is just to help you see that you’re right after all.