What To Do When Your Audience Asks For Your Advice
One of the most common questions that comes up for coaches who have a visible presence in the menstrual health space is this: what do I do when someone in my community asks for my advice?
It makes sense that it happens. If you've built a community around your own experience of endometriosis, PCOS, or coming off hormonal contraception, people are drawn to you because of that story. For me (Claire), that’s exactly how I started my career: blogging about coming of the pill.
It’s natural that your readers or community will want to know what you did, what you'd recommend, and what you think they should do.
But there's a big difference between coaching someone and advising someone.
Sharing your personal journey can be genuinely powerful. It builds trust, creates relatability, and helps people feel less alone. But there's a meaningful distinction between your experience informing your empathy and it informing your advice — especially when you don't have someone's full context or health history.
For people who aren't your clients, it's worth being mindful that giving advice outside of a proper coaching relationship isn't just less effective, it's also a boundary and safety issue, for both of you. We actually don’t recommend that you do that at all.
Okay, but what if the person asking for advice is your client?
In a coaching relationship, curiosity is your greatest tool.
When a client asks "what do you think I should do?" they're often really asking something else: Is it okay to want this? Will you validate what I'm already feeling? The most useful thing you can do is to get underneath it, with them.
This is where the OARS framework from motivational interviewing, that we teach at Cycle Coach School, comes in.
OARS stands for:
O = Open questions
Open-ended questions invite your client to explore what’s happening for them in this dilemma. This gives them an opportunity to name their hopes, fears and desires, as well as give you more insight into the context of their situation and their health history.
A = Affirmations
Affirmations help you to recognise your client’s strengths and efforts in what they’ve overcome or accomplished. This is the part of the conversation where you support your client to feel encouraged!
R = Reflective listening
This is about reflecting back what you're hearing, including what might be underneath the words, what you’re sensing. This helps your client feel seen and heard as they navigate through this with you.
S = Summarising:
Summarising is taking time towards the end of the conversation to draw together what's emerged, helping them see it clearly. We know that change is more likely to happen when motivation comes from within, and a good summary can really help your client to see the clarity, wisdom and insight already alive within them.
For example, let’s say a client asks you whether or not you think they should stop taking their hormonal contraception.
Rather than giving a yes or no answer, you might ask: "I'm curious what's drawing you toward that decision. What are you hoping might change?"
That single question opens up the real coaching conversation: the hopes, the fears, the expectations that may or may not be realistic.
But you don't have to pretend you have no opinion.
Having a personal perspective isn't a problem, and there may come time for you to share yours. But imposing it right away is not good coaching. Instead, can you hold your own experience lightly, staying present to your client to keep them at the centre?
Of course, there comes a time when giving a great recommendation is naturally part of Cycle Coaching. But that is a collaborative process, one that we outline step-by-step in our training, and which is proven to be far more effective than just giving yes/no advice.
The goal is always to help your client find their own answer, not to hand them yours. And that is a far richer experience for your client, but also for you as a coach.
As for the people in your audience, those who are not your clients: you can still apply the OARS framework to these conversations! Plus a warm and polite reminder that you’re unable to give advice outside of a coaching contract. And then, why not link them to your services? It might be just the nudge they need to invest in more support.
This kind of nuanced, real-world support is what we explore inside Cycle Coach School. Up-skill and get certified as a professional Menstrual Cycle Coach with us.
References & Readings
Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd edition). The Guilford Press.Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.