The language varies. “What would you do?” Or: “Just tell me what you are seeing.” Or, most directly: “You have been through this before. What is the answer here?”
The request feels reasonable. The coach has experience. The leader is under pressure. The dark is uncomfortable. Why not just take the flashlight for a moment and show the way.
We never do.
Not because we are withholding. Not because we lack a view. But because the moment we take the flashlight, something shifts that is very difficult to reverse. The leader steps back, just slightly, into the position of someone being guided rather than someone navigating. The ownership moves. And in the dark, at the speed decisions travel at CxO level, that shift costs more than the temporary comfort is worth.
We worked with a Chair who reached this moment about three months into a particularly difficult board dynamic. She was exhausted, the situation was genuinely complex, and she asked us, plainly, to tell her what to do.
We stayed with the question instead. We asked her what she already knew that she had not yet said out loud.
The answer came. It always does.
The flashlight was hers from the beginning. That was never a metaphor. It was the whole point.