There’s a moment in a good coaching session when language stops being the point.
I found mine in a Paris boulangerie.
A client had suggested I try a Brioche au Chocolat. Simple enough request. Except the woman behind the counter called it something slightly different, then something else entirely, and by the third variation I had no idea what we were talking about. My French is, let’s say, aspirational. Hers was French.
And yet we figured it out. She stayed patient. I stayed curious. We both wanted the same thing, which was for me to leave with something good and for the exchange to actually work. It did.
That’s what stayed with me walking out, pastry in hand.
We talk a lot in coaching about the power of language, precision, asking the right question, naming what’s happening in the room. All of it matters. But there’s something underneath language that makes the conversation possible at all: the willingness to meet someone where they are, to stay in the exchange even when it’s awkward, to trust that meaning can be made even across a gap.
The shopkeeper didn’t dismiss me for not knowing the right word. She didn’t give up when I looked blank. She worked with what I brought.
That’s not a bad model for coaching.
Some of the most productive moments with clients aren’t the articulate ones. They’re the pauses, the half-finished sentences, the “I don’t quite know how to say this” moments. Those are often exactly where the real work is sitting. A coach who needs clean language to stay present will miss a lot.
Paris has a reputation for impatience with tourists who don’t speak French. Maybe that’s sometimes true. But in my experience, most people respond to genuine effort, a real attempt to connect. They don’t need you to be fluent. They need you to show up.
Clients are the same. They don’t need you to have the perfect question. They need to know you’re actually there.
Till the next croissant moment.
