"It's not just about a coach telling you what to do and just following it unthinkingly"

Coaching should be a partnership that cultivates judgment, not a command-and-control relationship that rewards obedience. The point is less about downloading instructions and more about building the learner’s capacity to notice, question, adapt, and decide. When guidance is taken unthinkingly, performance may improve in the short term, but the person remains dependent on external direction, brittle in novel situations, and vulnerable to error when conditions change.

Unthinking compliance discourages curiosity and suppresses the skill of asking why, precisely the habit that transfers learning beyond the practice ground. It also raises ethical concerns: if authority goes unchecked, harmful norms can persist. In sport, classrooms, and workplaces, blind following produces technicians; thoughtful engagement produces artisans who can redesign their approaches under pressure.

Good coaching frames instruction with reasons. It invites the learner to test assumptions, to run small experiments, to reflect on outcomes, and to co-create goals. It alternates between demonstration and dialogue: here is the technique, here is the principle behind it, here’s how to adjust when variables shift. Feedback becomes a conversation, not a verdict. Questions like “What did you notice?”, “What options did you consider?”, and “What would you try next time?” convert direction into durable understanding.

There are moments for direct instruction, safety protocols, emergencies, foundational skills for novices. Even then, debriefs embed meaning so that rules become internalized judgments instead of rote scripts. As competence grows, the coach should progressively release responsibility, designing environments that nudge self-regulation: constraints that encourage discovery, metrics that inform rather than dictate, and psychological safety that makes dissent and iteration normal.

The outcome of such an approach is autonomy with accountability. Learners develop an internal compass, capable of navigating uncertainty without waiting for orders. They become adaptable, reflective, and ethically grounded, able to perform when the plan breaks, to learn when they stumble, and to lead others without reproducing unthinking obedience. That is the real promise of coaching: not control, but the capacity to choose wisely.