Coaching practices for How to Give Honest Advice

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Give Honest Advice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I have something honest I need to tell someone, and I’m stuck on how to say it
• When I finally say the hard thing it comes out as my blunt conclusion delivered like a verdict, and the other person’s walls go straight up
• I dish out plenty of feedback but I’ve never once asked my team to tell me what I’m getting wrong, and I think that’s exactly why they don’t trust that honesty around here is safe
• I’m facing a real decision and some part of me already knows what the honest answer is
• I actually have useful information that could help them, but the moment I offer unsolicited advice they tune me out or bristle

Practices that may help

1. Adapt how you deliver feedback to the person’s style
   Deliver the same honest feedback in the form the other person can actually hear it.
   The Platinum Rule
2. STATE your path
   Share your view honestly but in a way that keeps the other person open: facts first, then story, tentatively.
   Crucial Conversations, Made Practical
3. Ask for feedback before you give it
   Earn the right to challenge by inviting challenge yourself, first.
   Radical Candor, Made Practical
4. Advise yourself as you would a friend
   Ask what you would tell a friend in exactly your situation — then take your own advice.
   Self-Distancing: Thinking Clearly About Your Own Problems
5. Share advice with permission (ask–offer–ask)
   Ask what they know, offer information with consent, then ask what they make of it.
   Motivational Interviewing, Made Practical
6. Challenge directly
   Say the hard thing clearly, soon, and to the person’s face.
   Radical Candor, Made Practical
7. Give away the answer even when it costs you
   When the right answer reduces your value or authority, give it anyway — that act is the trust signal.
   The Trust Equation, Made Practical
8. Listen before diagnosing
   Resist the urge to solve until you can restate the problem in terms the other person agrees with.
   The Trust Equation, Made Practical
9. Apply reciprocity in feedback conversations
   Offer a genuine concession or acknowledgment of your own role before asking someone to change.
   The Rule of Reciprocity, Made Practical
10. Delivering honest feedback without cruelty
    Be completely truthful about a problem and completely non-cruel in how you deliver it.
    Ahimsa: Non-Violence as a Daily Practice

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