Powerful Questions Make a Difference

During coach training at Coach U I had an entire class titled Questioning. Yes, there was an entire class devoted to asking questions! I discovered that there is much to be gained from asking powerful questions and they are essential to good coaching. Discovery is the foundational intention of questioning. There are questions that deal with feeling, situations, intuition, serendipity, inquiry, thought-provoking, information, probing, option, why, rhetorical, reality-checking, focusing, reminding, integrity, goal-setting, prompting, solution, challenge, motivation, action, and encouragement. What a list to master!

I also learned that there are mistakes we make when asking questions which hinder the progress we expect to make with a client. Experiment with the following types of questioning in your practice:

A closed question is when it will be answered with a “yes” or “no” answer. You can change “Do you have any other options?” to “What other options do you have?”

Solution-oriented questions are pieces of advice with a question mark at the end. These questions start with “Should you, could you, will you, can you.” Change “Can you exercise more?” to “How could you involve other people in your exercise routine?”

Rhetorical questions are actually statements of your own opinion of the situation, which are often emotional or judgmental. Eliminating rhetorical questions requires a change in attitude toward the client. Instead of asking, “What were you thinking?”, ask “Could I be wrong about the situation? What am I missing?”

Leading questions are ones that subtly point the client to a certain answer that you want. “It seems like this option would feel good today, but the other would give lasting satisfaction. Which one do you want to choose?” doesn’t get the same result as “Which option will work best for you?”

“Why” questions tend to make people clam up because they challenge motives. When you pose a question like, “Why did you turn down the job?” you are asking the client to defend and justify their actions. The likely response will be the client gets defensive. It’s easy to rephrase questions to replace the “why” with “what.” In this case the better option is “What factors led you to turn down the job?”

Probing or broad questions are used to explore the client’s situation and gets more information out on the table. This forces the client to really examine what is going on. These questions can be answered in many different ways and tend to take you to what is most significant to the client. “What would you like to talk about today?” can result in the conversation going in a number of directions.

The bottom line, no matter what you do professionally, is that questions are part of our lives. Develop your questioning skills and see what a difference it makes.

Linda S. Eck Mills, MBA, RDN, LDN, FADA – Career Coach, 2014 -2016 NE Secretary