Can you have an ambition for someone else? Recently I caught myself wanting my teenage son to keep a regular sleep rhythm, my friend to exercise more, and my colleague to be a bit more careful. Always the same pitfall: I think I know what is good for someone else.
The adviser's pitfall
Organisational advisers and coaches are particularly susceptible to this pitfall. We are trained in recognising patterns, analysing situations and formulating advice. But the skill isn't to tell what should happen, the skill is to help the other person discover what they want to achieve.
The difference is subtle but crucial. An ambition imposed from the outside rarely holds. An ambition that grows from within has the power to truly change behaviour.
The toothbrush
A telling example from practice. In a care institution for residents with severe disabilities, the practice was for staff to brush over after the residents had brushed their teeth themselves. Logical from a hygiene point of view. But one staff member raised the question: does this match our stated ambition to respect residents' autonomy and dignity?
The solution was simple but meaningful: reverse the order. Let staff brush first, and residents brush themselves afterwards. The result was the same, but the signal fundamentally different.
What does this mean for our work?
Good advisory work begins with listening. Not with a solution, but with the question: what do you want to achieve? And are your actions in line with that ambition?
Sometimes the most effective thing we can do isn't to offer new ideas, but to make visible the gap between what someone says they want and what they actually do. That is confrontational, but it is also the fastest route to real change.