You are already well aware of the fact that coaching is done most effectively through the use of questions. A powerful coaching question ignites the imagination of your client and helps them to overcome boundaries. In contrast to telling, lecturing, and offering advice, questions have the potential to lead thought and sow the seed from which a variety of powerful responses can bloom.
A question, whether it is in a coaching, teaching, or interviewing context, is stronger when it encourages the person to reflect and elaborate. A few of these questions really stick out, and some of them even function as torpedo questions, plunging the client right into the meta realm where meaning ultimately rules the experience. Here are the five questions that would refine your coaching session with your client.
- Questions eliciting pre-session change.
- Questions that describe life after the problem (the miracle question).
- Exception finding and constructing questions.
- Hidden coping questions.
- Scaling questions.
#1. Pre-Session Change Questions
The first thing you should inquire about when meeting with a client for coaching is what has changed for him since setting up the session. It sounds bizarre at first. Why not make a change before you start coaching? Of course, it does occur, and it occurs frequently. Why? When a client makes an appointment or enrolls in a coaching program, she typically has high hopes for developing new skills and perspectives. Given the importance of the mind, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It usually serves as the impetus for a change that the person has been wishing to make for some time. As such, you should inquire about it.
The question, “What’s different now?” When asked, “How much of a shift is that for you?” How shocked are you that the change you wanted to see happen already has? Astonished, he asked, “How have you done that?”
Always keep in mind that your client has complete control over any desired alterations. And if you dig deep enough and pay attention enough, you can find out what it is that any individual needs to achieve and maintain a positive change in their life.
#2. Life After the Problem Questions
When you ask the miracle question, you are asking a suppositional question in the subjunctive case. You are using the what if or as if frame. “If you had a magic wand and tomorrow you got precisely what you have longed for, how would you know? What would life be like tomorrow?” The power of this question is that it enables your client to skip over defining the problem, understanding the problem, and solving the problem. Instead, you are going straight for a description of life after the problem. This is as solution-focused as a person can get. Steve de Shazer created it and I’d recommend his books, Making Difference Work and Clues if you want to become really skilled with it.
#3. Exception Finding and Constructing Questions
Here’s another fascinating questioning technique:
“So given X is what you want, when was the last time you experienced some of it?” “Never, not even a little bit?” “Okay, even if it was just a little bit, what was it like for you?”
Clients often discount exceptions as flukes or accidents or “that’s nothing.” Perhaps they have an either/or thinking pattern, or all/or/nothing, or perfectionistic. Consequently, there may be times when they are actually getting or achieving their desired outcome and not even know it. By finding and then developing the exception, you bring it out from the background and foreground it. This will frequently surprise the person and it gives you the chance to validate that the person already has a good foundation for achieving what she wants.
#4. Hidden Coping Questions
Here is another place where clients frequently fail to recognize that they are already coping effectively. This is especially true for clients who hold very high expectations for themselves. When you ask, “How did things go since our last session?” they often contend that things are just the same or even worse. Be skeptical. Ask questions about what’s been happening. Remember that all facts are filtered and interpreted through thinking patterns. So to get to the facts, you have to go through that person’s thinking patterns.
After hearing a hair-raising story about what did go on during the week, I have often commented, “My God, it’s amazing that things are not a hundred times worse! How did you prevent things from really going bad?” Suddenly that opens up a whole new realm. Suddenly she realizes that she actually did very well and that her coping skills are much better than she realized. Coaching, like sports and athletics, like skill development in any area, is frequently three steps forward and two steps backward. Improvement is seldom an upward straight line; more frequently it is a jagged line up and down and over time slowly going up. So, it is with coping with life’s challenges.
#5. Scaling Questions
Many of you, perhaps most of you asking scaling questions to gauge how much a person is experiencing a state. Yet that is only one use of scaling questions. “On a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being complete confidence, how confident are you that you will let this new insight, this belief, this decision, etc. guide you this coming week?” “Where would you place yourself on implementing this systematically this week?” Gauge the exception that you found. “While it is not a complete solution, if you could repeat this exception at will, how much of a solution would that be?”
Take Home Message
Your most powerful tool as a coach are questions designed to elicit change. The perfect coaching question at the appropriate moment can deliver critical insights that will shift your client’s perspective permanently when you seem to be going in circles with an issue they are encountering.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2022 Morpheus #53 QUESTIONS TO REFINE YOUR COACHING by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
