One of the questions that change professionals face when they have been engaged as coaches for a company that is implementing change is whether to offer prescriptive advice or passive facilitation. In this context, prescriptive advice should be read simply as providing answers to current problems. Passive facilitation simply means that the coach attempts to help the client find the solution for themselves. The answer to this question is largely contextual.
In some cases, a client will clearly direct the coach about what they expect, but this is by no means the norm. The companies that hire a coach while implementing change are not always clear about the exact role they expect the coach to play. It falls to the change professional to, in part, try to get a read on the expectations through a discussion.
If the client seems to be unclear on the role they expect the coach to play, it may be time to suggest a prescriptive approach. The coach can offer to examine the situation, perform some analysis, and conduct interviews to the end of generating a set of solutions that seem appropriate to the situation. This can provide the client with a starting point from which they can formulate an approach.
On the other hand, if the client has some set ideas about how they expect to go about implementing change, then the role of the coach may very well fall into that of a passive facilitator. In those situations, the coach should be trying to help draw solutions out of the clients that will facilitate the goals that the client has set forth for implementing change.
There are no hard and fast rules regarding these two approaches. It can depend heavily on the culture of the company, how clear the goals for implementing change are, and (if the coach works for a firm) on the philosophy of the coaching firm regarding how a coach should conduct work in the field.
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