The Art of Asking Questions in Coaching

1. Powerful Coaching Questions are open or focused, depending on the context: questions in coaching are usually open-ended questions, which cannot be answered with a simple yes or no, are those that promote awareness and learning. Such questions elicit more in-depth consideration and reflection.
2. Powerful Coaching Questions encourage learning:  You want to provoke thought and broaden your client’s comprehension of the situation. Therefore, your insightful coaching questions should direct your coachee’s attention to the most important components of the problem or circumstance you or they are working with.
3. Powerful Coaching Questions are asked with your coachees interests in mind: The questions are meant to provoke thought and broaden understanding in your clients. It may not always be about them but about the situation they are in.
4. Powerful Coaching Questions are meant to guide the client: Effective Coaching questions help clients identify their identities and their goals. They help their clients find the best solutions for them so as to consent to those remedies and embody those solutions.
5. Powerful Coaching Questions engage a personal response: Work is about outcomes, and people produce results, therefore good questions elicit a human response. As a manager, a coach or a leader, it is your responsibility to include employees/clients by eliciting a personal reaction about their feelings and the emotions they are bringing to the discussion. The more a question encourages a unique response to a problem or option, the more effective it is as a learning tool.
6. Powerful Coaching Questions consider future results in addition to current issues: Impactful questions can help a client who is mired in an issue shift their attention to the solution and provide fresh chances for action.
7. Powerful Coaching Questions encourage openness rather than defence: In order to avoid a defensive response, effective questions are phrased, stated, and displayed in a nonjudgmental manner with open body language. Since they frequently evoke defensive reactions or justifications, it is generally advisable to steer clear of questions that start with “why.”
8. Less is frequently more when it comes to questions with impact:  Avoid asking lengthy, complex questions and limit your questions to one at a time. A short, simple question– What is that all about? What will happen as a result? – This reaches the client right where it counts.

60 Coaching Questions for Leaders Using The Grow Model

The GROW Model is perhaps the most popular coaching framework utilised by leadership coaches all over the world for goal-setting and problem-solving. The GROW coaching paradigm promotes learning through experience, including introspection, insight, making decisions, and acting on those decisions. The acronym GROW stands for:

• Goal
• Reality
• Opportunity
• Will

Here are a few powerful coaching questions for leaders that you can turn to during sessions with your clients using the GROW Model framework:

GOAL

Setting a goal is the first step in coaching. It might be a goal for the coaching session, a performance objective, a development goal, a decision to be made, a challenge to solve, etc. 

The following are 15 questions in coaching for leaders that can help people clarify their objectives:

• What is your most important purpose nowadays? 
• What is the first idea that comes to your mind as your professional purpose? 
• Whether you are setting goals or just defining a sense of direction, how will you know when you reach them? 
• When you reach your (learning goals/performance goals/______) what would that give you? 
• What tends to distract you from your goals? 
• What is the goal that if you achieve it, it will make other things much easier? 
• How can you use your strengths to help you achieve your goals?
• What would you like to focus on today in this session?
• What’s important to you at this current moment?
• What does your ideal future look like to you?
• How do you see yourself in a period of five years?
• What new skills do you want to learn or develop as you move along your journey?
• What do you hope to achieve?
• What outcome are you aiming for?
• What would you like to alter?

REALITY

Using a number of various ways and strategies, the coach outlines and analyses the situation’s current reality during the second stage of the process. Before providing counsel or detailed comments on the current circumstances and challenges faced, the coach may ask the client to evaluate their own situation.

The secret is to ask your questions slowly and deliberately. This is not a lightning-fast question-answer round. Let the employers mull over their responses and the questions. Since this is not the time to offer your own solutions or thoughts, use active communication skills.

To further define the current situation, consider asking the following 15 questions:

• How many times did you do that in the last week
• What is your weight (or monthly sales, or the state of your in-box) right now?
• When was the last time that happened?
• What have you done to make things better so far?
• What areas of your life will being successful have an impact on?
• What have you actually accomplished on this today? How about this week?
• Who else is involved in the situation, and how?
• What have you tried already? What difference did those actions make?
• Which factors are most important in this matter?
• What events or choices led you to this place?
• What is currently working well for you?
• What justifications have you always had for not accomplishing your objectives?
• What have you tried so far?
• How were you able to change things this time?
• Where can you improve this time?

OPTIONS

The coaching session shifts to discussing what the employee can do to achieve their goal once you both have a clear picture of the circumstance.

These 15 questions are meant to aid the employee in generating ideas and exploring options:

• What would you do if you knew that you would succeed?
• What would occur if you took no action?
• What has proven effective thus far? How are you going to do more of that?
• What would you stand to earn or lose if you did that?
• What do you think would happen if someone did that to you or said that to you?
• What is the advantage or disadvantage of this choice?
• Which decision do you feel prepared to make?
• How have you handled this or a circumstance like it in the past?
• What are your choices to deal with a potential (bankruptcy/economic crisis/______)?
• How will you approach the (obstacle/goal/______)? 
• What do you see as the opportunities in the (project/problem/______)? 
• How will you approach the (problem/meeting/______) if you see it as an opportunity? 
• What is another perspective on the (plan/commitment/______)? 
• What is right about the (experience/project/______)? 
• What new possibilities do you see for improving the (situation/task/______)?

WILL

This is the last step where you turn the preferred solution into concrete action steps with high buy-in. These 15 questions are meant to aid the employee in committing to decisive actions:

• Which option(s) do you want to pursue?
• Turn that into an action step: what will you do by when?” 
• What step could you take this week that would move you toward your goal?
• You mentioned that you could do . What will you commit to doing?”
• How devoted are you to completing this task?
• How do you wish to be held liable for achieving this objective?
• When you reach your objective, how will you celebrate?
• What are your plans for the upcoming 24 hours?
• How will you know once it has been completed?
• Do you have any other options?
• What is the possibility of your strategy succeeding on a scale from one to 10?
• What requirements would there be for a 10?
• What challenges stand in the way of your success?
• What obstacles do you anticipate or foresee the need to plan?
• Does anything need to be added?

10 Best Coaching Question

1. An oldie but goodie: “If you had a magic wand, how would your life be different?” Consider, then seek a worthwhile objective or course of action.
2. “What are your deepest desires? How can you incorporate even a small amount of this into your life?”
3. Assume that you’ve just had a perfect week. What three tasks did you finish? It all comes down to having clear priorities.
4. What is your favourite way of self-sabotage? My own is (add yours here). What about you?
5. “How can staying exactly where you are serving you?” If you’re having problems making a change or achieving a goal in your life, consider this.
6. What one thing in your life would you alter if you could? A strong one to consider!
7. Imagine you’re 90 years old, happy, healthy & sat in your rocking chair. “What advice would you give yourself right now?” Now imagine you’re 16 again – the world is amazing & exciting. “What advice would you give yourself today?” 
8. For PERFECTIONISTS and PROCRASTINATORS: “What could you achieve today if you just LOWERED your expectations?”
9. “What if you worked on it right NOW, would REALLY put a smile on your face?” A great start of a session or when you need motivation.”
10. Imagine seeing yourself thru the eyes of someone who truly loves & respects you: “What new things do you see?”

P.S. An ESSENTIAL: “And what else?” Use after any response to get more information & deeper answers…

Listening With Your Entire Being

Till now, we have talked at length about asking questions, but as a coach, asking questions is incomplete without listening and knowing how to listen is the most crucial aspect of asking questions that have an impact. You must create space for your client by listening with your entire being (not just with your physical presence but with your entire being). When your client is discussing their problem, do this. Do it when they are thinking aloud while looking for solutions to their issues.

If you pay close attention, you may even pick up on their innermost thoughts, which will come through in the things they say to you. Be careful that you are not drawing your own conclusions and adding your own, based on your reality, personal insights to the discussion. Blaine Bartlett, a renowned figure in the space of coaching discusses how humans communicate not only through language but also through the mind, emotions, and physical body. Do you pay attention to the messages that your clients are conveying to you through their bodies, minds, and emotions? Or do you merely pay attention to what they say?

The secret to producing amazing results for your clients is to listen carefully, attentively, and with presence. Always pay attention to investigate and comprehend. not to reply or react. Your goal is to guide your customers on a journey to genuinely experience their emotions and discover the causes of those emotions. Your job is to assist them in exploring their emotions in depth and learning the meaning behind them. This will provide your clients a chance to learn new things about themselves, including their goals, anxieties, motives, and beliefs.

“Be bold, be bold, but not too bold”

Here is a rather metaphorical exercise for you: Take a little room in a metal warehouse by the water, furnish it with a solitary lightbulb dangling from a tattered wire in the ceiling, a small table, and two metal chairs, and go full Mossad on them. (or your own interpretation of that) However, you need to construct a space where transformation can possibly take place. They won’t understand the benefits of coaching if you just “eat lunch or sit” with them. Why spend top dollar for that? They’ll merely perceive you as a friendly, pleasant, gregarious person who is enjoyable to converse with. Going full Mossad on your customers might seem a bit extreme, but you get the concept.