When we ask questions as coaches, what are we doing? Typically, question-askers appear to be on a fact-finding mission. The question prompts an answer and we have received precisely what we wanted to know. For example, ‘What time does the train leave the station?’ ‘At midday’. Great, I now know what time to be on the platform.
But coaching questions are rarely as simple as that. They invite more than answers. They invite particular ways of thinking. If we ask, ‘When did you last have a good conversation with your colleague?’, we are putting importance on ‘conversation’, suggesting that ‘good’ ones might have special relevance and directing the client’s attention to that area.
When someone asks us what seems like a slightly odd question, we might wonder ‘where are they coming from?’ or in what frame does such a question make sense to the inquirer. That can be both more interesting and more challenging than another possible response, which is to reshape their question into a more familiar one which we can easily answer.
But coaching questions are rarely as simple as that. They invite more than answers. They invite particular ways of thinking. If we ask, ‘When did you last have a good conversation with your colleague?’, we are putting importance on ‘conversation’, suggesting that ‘good’ ones might have special relevance and directing the client’s attention to that area.
When someone asks us what seems like a slightly odd question, we might wonder ‘where are they coming from?’ or in what frame does such a question make sense to the inquirer. That can be both more interesting and more challenging than another possible response, which is to reshape their question into a more familiar one which we can easily answer.
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