Are Your Questions (Really) Powerful?
Are you trying to become a stronger leader-coach? I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years teaching leaders to coach, and recently put together a concise list of “powerful questions” for leaders to use in coaching conversations. I’ve written before about the subtle nuance between coaching and solving; here I dig deeper into the nuance between powerful coaching questions and questions that we ask simply to gain basic clarity. To start, let’s define these two terms.
Clarifying Questions
Clarifying questions are those that give the coach insight into the team member’s situation. Clarifying questions are important to the extent that we’re lost and simply trying to understand what someone is talking about. But more often, clarifying questions get us into trouble when we’re coaching, because the more clarity we have (or think we have) into someone else’s challenge, the more likely we are to try to solve it. In other words, many leader-coaches seek too hard to understand; they let their own need to understand get in the way of their team members’ need to think for themselves.
Powerful Questions
What makes a question powerful? In the context of coaching, powerful questions are those that provoke insights. Insight can come through new perspectives, connecting dots in new or different ways, learning from past experiences, and even simply slowing down to pull out inner wisdom. Powerful questions, therefore, go beyond clarifying questions. Powerful questions are rarely about the team member’s situation, but rather focus on what the team member thinks, feels, and does about their situation.
Clarifying Questions
Powerful Questions
Focus on the team member’s situation
Give the coach insight into the team member’s situation
Can make it difficult not to solve for the team member
Focus on what the team member thinks, feels, and does about their situation
Provoke insights
Leave it to the team member to solve for themselves
Example: A team member comes to you (the leader-coach) complaining about a colleague who won’t share information.
Clarifying Questions
Powerful Questions
What specifically is he doing to withhold information from you?
Have you asked him directly to share?
What does he say when you ask him to share?
What do you think could be driving this behavior?
How is this impacting the way that you’re engaging with him?
What would you do differently if you fully trusted him?
Are there things you’ve thought about doing, but haven’t tried yet?
In the example above, notice that the focus shifts from the problem (the person who is withholding information) to the person that you’re coaching. This is the nuance that great leader-coaches learn to navigate. In a coaching conversation, powerful questions are essential in all three stages of The Coaching Approach:
To Explore something with a team member,
To help the team member Commit to action, and
To Follow-up with the team member.
The Coaching Approach
To keep it simple and useful, I’ve organized a small set of starter questions into the three stages of The Coaching Approach: Explore, Commit, and Follow-Up. The next time that you’re preparing for a coaching conversation, see if this framework helps you stay out of solving mode.
Click here to download this “Powerful Coaching Questions” tip sheet.
Enjoy your coaching practice, and please let me know if you find this tip sheet helpful.
