Have you ever been working with a client and thought you knew exactly what they needed to do?

You’ve seen this situation before. You recognize the pattern. You know what generally works. Maybe you’ve even experienced something similar yourself.

You offer what you believe is excellent advice, confident that it could save your client considerable disappointment or struggle. And then they don’t follow it!

Imagine that!

Welcome to the world of helping.

The Temptation of Expertise

The more knowledge and experience we acquire, the easier it can become to believe we know what’s best for another person. After all, we’ve studied human behavior, relationships, addiction, leadership, or whatever our area of expertise happens to be. We’ve worked with people facing similar challenges, and we’ve seen what helps and what doesn’t.

Our experience can make us more effective helpers. But it can also create a temptation to move beyond offering information into nudging, persuading, or even arguing someone toward the choice we believe is best.

We may find ourselves thinking, If they would just do what I’m suggesting, their life would be so much better! And perhaps it would. But there’s something important we need to remember.

Information Isn’t Authority

William Glasser’s Second Axiom of Choice Theory® reminds us that all we can give or receive from other people is information. What we do with that information is our choice.

This is an important distinction for helping professionals. Our expertise may improve the quality of the information we offer, but it doesn’t transfer ownership of another person’s choices to us.

We can share what we know. We can identify potential consequences. We can offer alternatives the person may not have considered. But the person sitting across from us is the one who must decide what to do with that information. And they’re the one who will live with the consequences.

Why Do Helping Professionals Overreach?

Most of us enter helping professions because we genuinely want to make a difference. We want to reduce suffering, help people solve problems, and support them in creating better lives. But sometimes our desire to help gets tangled up with our own need to feel effective and competent.

We may begin measuring our success by whether clients follow our recommendations, make the choices we think they should make, or achieve the outcomes we believe are best.

There can also be external pressures. Perhaps an organization expects measurable improvement within a limited number of sessions. Maybe an insurance company authorizes only a certain amount of treatment. Or perhaps we’re simply frustrated because we can see what appears to be a straightforward solution, and our client isn’t choosing it.

Whatever the reason, we need to recognize when our desire to help is beginning to interfere with the client’s opportunity to develop their own expertise about their life.

We may believe we know what’s best for someone, but we can’t possibly know everything that matters to that person. We’re different people, with different experiences, priorities, needs, and pictures of what we want.

When Giving Advice Creates More Problems

There’s another reason I caution helping professionals about telling clients what they should do. Depending on which need a client is attempting to satisfy, they may respond quite differently to your advice.

Someone seeking Connection or Safety & Security may be inclined to follow your suggestions because they want to maintain the relationship, gain your approval, or feel reassured that they’re making the right decision. Someone seeking Significance or Freedom may be more inclined to resist your suggestions because they want to demonstrate their competence or maintain control over their own choices.

But here’s where things get especially interesting. Suppose your client follows your advice, and it works beautifully. They may begin to believe that you know better than they do what decisions they should make. Instead of developing confidence in their own judgment, they may become increasingly dependent on the therapeutic relationship for direction. Now suppose they follow your advice, and it doesn’t work. Who do you think they’re likely to blame? You!

Neither outcome is particularly desirable for helping professionals.

Our goal isn’t to become the deciding factor in our clients’ decisions. It’s to help them develop the ability to evaluate their options, make their own choices, and learn from the results.

The measure of our effectiveness isn’t how often clients follow our advice. It’s how well we’re helping them become more effective decision-makers in their own lives.

Expertise Can Narrow Curiosity

One of the greatest risks of expertise is that it can cause us to stop being curious. Once we believe we’ve identified the problem, we may become so confident in our explanation that we stop considering other possibilities. We have our hypothesis, and everything the client tells us gets filtered through it.

Instead, we need to remain open to the possibility that we’re missing something important.

Before offering suggestions, consider asking yourself:

• What am I missing?
• What does this person truly want?
• What purpose might their current behavior be serving, whether they’re aware of it or not?
• What might they lose if they make the change I’m suggesting?

That last question is particularly important. A behavior that appears obviously problematic to us may be helping the client satisfy an important need. Unless we understand what the behavior is accomplishing for them, our suggestions may not be especially useful.

The Expert/Client Paradox

As helping professionals, we may know considerably more about counseling, relationships, addiction, behavior change, or leadership than the people who come to us for assistance.

But our clients know something we don’t. They know more about being themselves. They have lived their experiences, developed their priorities, and created their own pictures of what they want from life.

Our professional knowledge matters. So does their personal knowledge. Neither cancels the other. The most effective helping relationship brings these two kinds of expertise together rather than allowing one to dominate.

Using Expertise in Service of Client Agency

So how do we share what we know without taking over? I believe several professional skills are particularly important.

Ask questions that encourage self-evaluation.

Questions are among the most valuable tools available to helping professionals. Rather than telling clients what they’re doing wrong, we can invite them to examine their choices and consider whether those choices are helping them get what they want. We can ask about potential benefits, consequences, and alternatives they may not have considered.

The purpose isn’t to lead them to the answer we’ve already decided is correct. It’s to help them evaluate their own behavior more thoughtfully.

Share information without presenting predictions as certainties.

If a client describes a plan and you recognize potential problems, share your concerns. You might ask, “Have you considered the possible benefits and consequences of that choice?” If they haven’t identified a consequence you believe is important, explain what your experience suggests could happen. But remember that your experience doesn’t allow you to predict the future with certainty. You can identify possibilities and risks without insisting that your prediction will come true.

Help clients identify multiple options.

Sometimes clients come to us because they genuinely don’t know what to do. Others want us to tell them what decision to make. I encourage helping professionals to resist taking over that responsibility.

When clients are struggling to identify alternatives, I like to offer at least three possibilities when appropriate. Then I ask, “Those are the options I can think of. What other possibilities do you see?” This helps expand their choices rather than narrowing them to the one I prefer. Ultimately, I want clients to evaluate their options and choose the one they believe will produce the best outcome for them.

Challenge carefully and respectfully.

There are times when we need to challenge a client’s thinking or invite them to consider something they’ve overlooked. But how we do that matters. A question that appears neutral to us may communicate disapproval or criticism to the client, particularly if they sense that we’re trying to steer them toward a particular answer. Our goal should be to help clients examine their choices, not pressure them into agreeing with us.

Use self-disclosure thoughtfully.

Occasionally, sharing something from our own experience can be helpful. But self-disclosure should always serve the client’s process, not our own needs. I believe it’s especially important that anything we disclose is something we’ve already processed and resolved ourselves and that it’s genuinely relevant to the client’s situation. The focus needs to remain on the person we’re helping.

For professionals interested in developing their questioning skills, I’ve created an eBook called Powerful Questions for Counselors and Coaches, which offers additional ways to use Reality Therapy with clients.

Knowing When to Step Back

Perhaps one of the hardest parts of helping is recognizing when we’ve done what we can. We’ve listened. We’ve asked questions. We’ve shared information, identified potential risks, and helped the client explore alternatives. And now the client is ready to decide.

Their decision may not be the one we would make. They may choose a path we believe will be more difficult. They may decide they’re not ready to change. They may even make a choice we strongly disagree with.

Except when safety concerns or professional responsibilities require additional action, our role is not to take over that decision. It’s to respect the client’s agency while remaining available to help them evaluate what happens next.

Expertise is valuable. Experience is valuable. Professional judgment is valuable. But none of those gives us ownership of another person’s life.

Expertise may improve the information you offer. It doesn’t give you ownership of another person’s choice.

Reflection

Where might knowing a great deal be making it harder for you to remain curious?