Coaching starts with diagnosis

Watch what happens when a manager notices someone struggling. Almost always, they jump straight to a prescription: more check-ins, a course, a harder conversation, more pressure. The prescription might even be good. But a prescription is only as good as the diagnosis behind it, and most coaching never makes one. So the principle I try to hold: name why someone is stuck before deciding how to help.

In practice, almost every gap is one of three kinds, and each one asks something different of you.

1. A knowledge gap needs context, not practice. The person is missing information nobody ever gave them: how the business makes money, what the constraint really is, what good looks like here. The fix is real work that forces the context in, not a lecture. And be honest about the cause. If nobody ever taught it, that is an institutional failure, and it should not sit on the person's scorecard.

2. A situation blocker needs removal, not coaching. Sometimes the constraint is external: a dependency, no bandwidth, a decision stuck above them. Coaching someone through a blocker quietly blames them for a situation they do not control. The action here belongs to you, the manager. Remove the blocker, then see what performance actually looks like.

3. A skill gap needs reps, one skill at a time. This is the only case where classic coaching applies: structured, repeated practice. Prescribe the one skill with the biggest payoff, sequenced by background, usually the cross-skill they would never build on their own. A list of five weaknesses is a performance review. One skill with reps is coaching.

Two habits make the diagnosis stick. First, choose between coaching and advising out loud. Ask "do you want advice, or space to think it through?" People commit far harder to conclusions they reached themselves, but always asking questions fails the person who genuinely lacks the answer and needs it now. Second, coach the person in front of you, not a template. People are wired differently, big picture versus detail, lateral versus linear, and every strength drags a matching weakness behind it. A gap in someone's profile is often a placement problem, not a performance problem.

And when the diagnosis says the bar is not being met, hold the bar with your sleeves rolled up: state the expectation plainly, name the specific gap, then sit down and fix it together on the real work. That third step is what makes a high standard feel like support instead of a threat. A high bar without help breeds fear. A high bar with help is how people get great.

Diagnosis is the coaching. The advice is just the last step.