Why you want to hurt people’s feelings

How honesty builds trust

Why do people hire coaches?

Are they looking for an overly cuddly yay-sayer, handling their precious feelings with a thick set of gloves?

Sometimes. Maybe.

But most of the time, these coach-seekers (myself included) are looking for someone who shows them their blind spots and helps them grow.

The same applies to your personal and professional relationships.

Whether in friendships, partnerships, or workplace dynamics, to be truly valuable to others, it's crucial to provide honest reflection and to challenge their narratives.

Wouldn't you want someone to do the same for you?

The two sides of coaching

One of the biggest transformations of my life came from becoming a coach.

Not only in a professional sense, I mean, I’m a coach now and I wasn’t before, but also in a personal sense. The skills I learned had a huge impact on how I interact in all of my other relationships.

Learning these coaching skills was such a deviation from my regular communication style, that it took a while to adapt and make them my own. I needed some time after my comprehensive coaching education to ‘unschool’ and find back my own voice in all this new and exciting material.

Because of my training, I quickly and incredibly went from the worst kind of advice giver (oblivious, stubborn, and ‘always right’) to a supportive conversationalist (i.e. a coach), adept at pulling wisdom from people, helping them find their own answers and insights.

But the pendulum swung too far. I got caught up in the ‘softness’ of this new communication style.

With ‘softness’ I mean that many coaching values revolve around giving clients the space to discover insights for themselves, as opposed to advising, directing, or leading. ‘Stepping out of the way’ rather than intervening.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that.

It’s a fundamental strength of coaching, and one of the reasons coaching is so efficient.

But moving too far into that direction made me ignore another, equally important part of being a good coach (someone who helps others grow), and that’s challenging people.

It took me a while to recover my own style and voice. What helped me find it back was the realization that I was missing this crucial component of challenge and its important role in helping people grow.

The outside perspective

In order to grow, we need to become aware of what we cannot see ourselves. We need other people, unencumbered by all of our baggage, biases, and beliefs to point out our blind spots to us.

When I’m stuck in a thought-loop, blankly staring at my overwhelming to-do list, one simple question from someone else (‘What’s the one thing you can do right now to make some progress?’) can help me get unstuck in a split second.

This is where the profession of coaching shines. Coaches are basically hired because they’re on the outside of their clients (and maybe they have a conversational skill or two).

But it’s just as necessary if you’re not a professional coach. When you want to be a truly supportive and growth-promoting force in people’s lives, you need to help them see what they cannot see. 

The role of uncomfortable truths

”Show your clients what they cannot see. Say to your clients what no one else would dare to say.” — Rich Litvin (The Prosperous Coach)

In coaching, it’s a misconception that listening supportively, being client-focused, and letting clients lead the agenda means being soft on them.

Good coaches tell their clients uncomfortable truths, challenge their assumptions, interrupt them when necessary, and even poke them a little bit from time to time to provoke a breakthrough in their thinking.

Being ‘nice’ and ‘polite’ won’t help your clients grow. And their growth is why they hired you.

Saying uncomfortable things and not shying away from difficult topics is just as important in our personal and professional relationships. Having the guts to do so is necessary, even if it might, at times, hurt someone's feelings.

Of course, we’re never out to hurt people’s feelings on purpose, we want to be their support system above all. But if you want to help them to grow, you also want to be their challenge system.

Getting periodically lost in soft-land made me realize that ignoring the challenge component left a lot of growth on the table.

If you want to become someone others depend on (for their growth), you have to dare to take the risk of hurting their feelings.

For their benefit and ultimately the benefit of the relationship.

The upwards spiral of honesty and trust

While it’s easier to avoid difficult conversations or to spare someone's feelings, this ultimately denies them the opportunity to improve.

Honest observation, delivered with empathy, helps someone understand their strengths and areas for development, enabling them to reach their full potential.

You are actually supporting others when you ask them a challenging question, rather than avoiding honesty and leaving them in the dark.

It shows that you are caring enough to say something that might feel uncomfortable, and saying it anyway. When the relationship is strong, doing that will make it even stronger.

Of course, familiarity matters. Dropping a harsh truth bomb when you’ve just met someone won’t go over so well. 

There needs to be some trust first.

In my coaching practice, I tend to coach people for longer periods of time. The type of clients I attract are continuous growers, self-developers, and life-long learners, and they know that I’ll help them see what they can’t see on their own.

Because trust builds over time, I’m able to take more and more risk and my clients benefit from that.

This goes for all of your relationships too.

The more someone trusts you, the higher the risk you can take in terms of calling them out on their bullshit, pointing out their blindspots, and helping them grow because of it.

This has a built-in upward spiral in it. The more honest you are, the more trust you gain, and the more honest you can be.

Next time someone important to you seems to be stagnating (by singing the same song over and over again), ask yourself if this might be a chance to take a risk and challenge their perspective. They'll likely thank you.