Been there, done it, want the t-shirt?

A casual stroll through Linked In reveals a trend towards successful founders, those that have set up and sold their businesses, turning advisors to those who aspire to do the same. The logic for this is obvious and usually reads “I’ve been there, done it, made many mistakes along the way and can short cut your journey to success by helping you avoid these errors”. But I am left wondering, like much prevailing logic, whether this is flawed and importantly what impact this flawed assumption maybe having on those who take up this advice.

Let me start by saying that learning from experience definitely has it’s place. In every walk of life, transitions are often accompanied by turning to those who have been there before. A need that only increases when these transitions require us to wrestle with seemingly unreconcilable tensions. At these times, if nothing else, it can be comforting to know that the storm will pass, and that others, like us, have successfully navigated the mess.

But as any-one schooled in the difference between mentoring and coaching will tell you, there is a fine but distinct line between the giving of advice and the discovery of one’s own path. There are also huge benefits in the latter. Is not part of the entrepreneurial journey or rite of passage a period or several periods of suffering, confusion or disruption before clarity starts to emerge. The absence of which may hinder learning, impact the resilience of individuals to navigate future challenges and may diminish the tensions that are often the birth place of new thinking and new ideas.

If, as some commentators do, we compare the life-stages of a business to that of a human being, is there not a danger that we take on the role of knowing parent, developing our child in our own image, or perhaps worse through them trying to live out unrealised aspirations; to in someway rewrite our own past.

Many will say that they adopt an open approach to their advisory role, that as an experience it may feel more like coaching than mentoring. Why then build your credibility on the depth of your past experience? How does this play out when the advise is linked to the investing party or the promise of future investment?

At this point it feels important to admit a bias (I have many) which is grounded in a fundamental belief that the end goal of coaching should be to create the conditions for greater agency in the coachee, team or organisation. If Albert Bandura is right that agency defined as “the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life is the essence of humanness.” then this seems not only an important endeavour but one against which we should measure anything that presents itself in this field.

In this light then it feels important for us all not to assume that just because we have been there and done it, we are best placed to provide the support that others need as they make their transition. Instead perhaps we might start by asking ourselves what we are really up to in our practice and who we up to it for — the founder or founders, their people, or perhaps ourselves.

I raise this not because there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea those who have been successful providing the benefits of their experience to others, but more, because understanding our true motivations may help in better meeting the needs of those who seek our help and by extension the human systems they serve.