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How do you respond to the suggestion that "you should be coaching my boss"!

What do you say if someone that you are coaching suggests that you should also be coaching their boss, or even be coaching their boss instead of them!
If you take this sort of request at face value then you could assume that it is a compliment to you skills as a coach and that your coaching subject genuinely thinks that his or her manager could benefit your coaching input in much the same way that they have. However in my experience this would be a naïve and simplistic conclusion to reach.
By the time your coachee asks you this question you will probably already have some sense of the quality of the relationship that exists between the coachee and their manager and therefore how satisfied they are with the communication, direction, support and challenge that they get from them. If you don’t know this, then you need to explore this suggestion further with them in order to understand what their motives are for suggesting that you coach their boss.
It can sometimes be an expression of the dissatisfaction that your coachee may have about how they are being managed – perhaps in comparison to the open minded, non-directive, supportive relationship that you have been able to establish with them in your role as coach. You may feel the need to explain the different role that you as a coach, play when compared to that of their manager. At times I have found myself defending a line manager’s style and their need to get effective performance out of their staff members.
If I establish that the coachee is very dissatisfied with the input, communication and treatment that they get from their line manager and that this is the reason that they are suggesting that I approach their line manager and offer to coach them then I would proceed with caution. I may well talk with the coachee about what options they can think of to improve the relationship with their manager and about how they might be able to coax a different response out of them. This follows on from the fundamental responsibility assumption that underlines the basics COACH model and process.
If I do decide that the coachee genuinely believes that I could help their boss to become more effective and that they are suggesting it for the right, positive reasons then I would approach the line manager with caution. I would be very careful about how I would explain my interest in coaching them and I would bear in mind the source of this suggestion and the appropriate confidentiality agreed with them. Ultimately it is up to the potential coachee to decide for themselves whether they want to get involved with me as a coach. They may decide that they want to and would benefit, but that I am not the right person to coach them because I coach one of their direct reports. This is fine and I would understand and respect such a request and introduce them to another coach.
This suggestion by a coachee that their manager would also benefit from being coached by me does come up quite often, but the instances of this being put to the manager and of them accepting this approach is fairly rare. A more frequent route that often follows this sort of suggestion is a discussion with the subject about how to influence and even coach their line manager.