The Reframe, Issue 02: Flexibility is not Alignment
Most of us were taught to be supportive as coaches, to support the client and their goals. This is half right IMO. The client is an adult, they know themselves, and a coach who cannot adapt is a coach who loses people. So when a client asks to try something, we immediately go into ‘support mode’. We fold it in, we adjust the plan, we tell ourselves that flexibility is what keeps somebody bought in for the long haul. That instinct is not wrong, and the coaches who NEVER bend tend to end up being self righteous coaches. I would like to reframe this one a bit.
When we teach Basic Lifestyle Guidelines, alignment sits at the very bottom of the pyramid. Everything else is downstream of it. Before you get to sleep and chewing and habits, the question is whether you and this person are actually moving toward the same aim. Here is the part I had wrong for a long time:
Alignment is the coach's job to hold, not the client's. And it does not break at the 6 month mark. It breaks the first time something small slides and you let it go.
James described it on the show better than I would have. He talked about being early in a relationship, seeing a little indicator that things were off, and letting it pass. His words were that he wasn't consistent on behalf of the relationship. Then he gave the example, and it is deliberately tiny. Sorry, I'll be a couple of minutes late.
Two minutes. Nothing. Except the two of you set a tone at the beginning about professional courtesy and what respect looks like in this relationship, and now one of you has quietly stepped off it and the other one has decided not to mention it. James thinks the client is often asking a question when they do that. Is this person really going to hold the line.
Another example… a client says they want to work on something, and it cuts against everything we have built over the last twelve months, and it is so easy to just say okay and change the plan. Three weeks later it happens again. That is honestly part of why I do not coach anymore. I am half joking there. Only half.
Here is the part that should get your attention, because it runs opposite to how this feels. Holding the line does not cost you the relationship. James's point is that if your direction is genuinely principled, rather than a menu of things they could do, clients stop asking. He said members in his gym used to check with each other to see whether he had bent for anyone else, and the answer came back that he had not. That is what made the direction believable. The requests dried up because the position was solid, not because he was strict.
Where it fits: the weekly check in. Two changes. First, treat the first small breach as an alignment signal and name it that week, while it is still small enough to be awkward rather than a confrontation. Second, before you prescribe anything, ask out loud whether you are still aligned on the aim. Not implied. Asked.
The cost is real. Some clients want a coach who says yes, and if you start holding the line, a few of them will find one. You will feel that in the first month and it will be uncomfortable. The ones who stay will stop bringing you the squirrel, which is the whole point.
Try: think of the last small thing a client did that you let slide. The late arrival, the skipped check-in, the offhand request that did not fit. Bring it up this week. One sentence, not a lecture.
Alignment is not something you set once and revisit at reassessment. It is something you hold, constantly.
This came out of a conversation with James on Frameworks, Episode 47. When Physical Ability Declines: What Matters Most?
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