What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Creative Confidence
Coaches and mentors can slip into offering the same advice that worked for a past client or mentee, applying it to a new person's situation before really understanding what's different about theirs. There's also a version of this where a coach avoids experimenting with their own methods, sticking to a fixed framework because deviating from it feels like it undermines their authority.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Get close to the real problem or the people affected by it before jumping to solutions
Before offering guidance, it helps to get specific about what this person is actually stuck on, rather than pattern-matching to a similar-sounding case from before.
A coach hears a client describe feeling "stuck at work" and immediately offers the same career-pivot framework that helped a previous client, without asking enough questions to notice this client's issue is really about a strained relationship with one manager, not the career itself.
In your next session with someone new, spend the first ten minutes only asking questions and resisting the urge to offer a framework or solution.
Generate many possible ideas before judging any of them
Reaching for the one method you know best can mean missing an approach that would fit this particular person better.
A mentor always recommends the same goal-setting exercise to every mentee, regardless of what they're working on, because it's the one tool they're most comfortable teaching.
Before your next session, write down at least three different approaches or exercises that could fit this person's situation, even if you expect to use your usual one.
Build something rough and quick to test an idea, rather than perfecting it in your head first
A small, low-stakes exercise tried once in session reveals more about whether an approach fits than any amount of planning it out beforehand.
A coach spends a week designing an elaborate multi-step program for a client before ever testing a single piece of it, then discovers in the first session that the client responds better to a much simpler starting point.
Try one small piece of a new approach in a single session as a quick test, before building out the entire plan around it.
Treat early failure as useful data and iterate from there
When an exercise or piece of advice doesn't resonate with someone, that's useful information about fit, not evidence that the coach has failed or the person is unreachable. Noticing specifically where the disconnect happened — the framing, the timing, the ask — helps shape what to try next with that person. Coaches who treat a flat session this way tend to adapt their approach client by client instead of repeating a method that clearly isn't working.
Tailoring an approach to each person can feel less efficient than relying on one proven method for everyone. But time spent adjusting to fit someone's actual situation usually pays back quickly, since a mismatched approach tends to stall progress and require even more time to recover from.
Name one thing, honestly
Where are you currently applying an approach that worked well for someone else, without having checked whether it actually fits the person in front of you now?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Try one small piece of a new approach in a single session as a quick test, before building out the entire plan around it.