Three Types of Coaching Questions You Should Never Ever Ask During Coaching Conversations
How many times have you ever heard this statement:
“There’s no such thing as a poor question.”
Um, me. Me. I’ve heard that said, many a time. And up until I began coaching and fell in love with questions, I believed that statement. However, while there may not be a poor question, there is most definitely a poor type of question. I should know—I’ve tried to ask those types of questions and had my coaching sessions fall short of where they could be.
As a coach, there are three types of questions I avoid in coaching conversations. By bringing them into the open, I’m hoping to help you avoid them, too.
Judgmental Questions
Judgmental questions can be sneaky little buggers that aren’t questions at all. Instead, they convey accusations, criticisms, or even anger, all under the subtle guise of a question. Here are some examples:
What about this is a good idea?
How can you justify your position on that candidate?
What is more important than getting to our meeting on time?
Yes, those are questions that follow the format of a powerful question, using “what” or “how” as their opening salvo, but after that they fall short. Powerful questions are big, open-ended generous inquiries, and none of these questions are that. You not only hear the accusation and the criticism within the question, you can feel it. These questions are downright abrasive.
So how do I step out of judgement? Leo Babauta (perhaps better known as the creator of Zen Habits, created a four-step non-judgmental communication method that uses the acronym of DUAL. It can be quite useful to check myself whenever I feel myself sliding into judgement.
Don’t Pass Judgment–When we judge something, we assign value. It’s not just any value that we’re assigning, we’re assigning OUR value. Instead of judgment, switch channels and step into observation.
Understand–Climb your empathy wall, trying to see what it is like to be that other person, in their situation, in their shoes. Ask powerful questions and get the big-picture view of what happened so that you can better understand their thinking and actions.
Accept–My way may not be your way which may not be their way or definitely not her way which isn’t even close to his way. Then, accept that. Yes, this can be hard, but none of us have the same internal wiring. We’ve had different experiences, different conclusions, and we don’t always value the same things. Accept this, because at the end of the day, it’s all okay.
Love–Fall in love with the fact that we all have different perspectives. This is a good thing, because without that, we would never have new ideas or fresh thinking. Focus on the value that comes from a person’s unique point of view.
Alternatives to Judgemental Questions
What do I see? What do I hear?
How am I judging, and how can I shift to observing?
What is it like from their perspective?
How does their experience help them to see things differently?
Solution-Oriented Questions
Ah, solution-based questions, a personal favorite of mine where I can use a question as a sneaky way to tell you what to do!
Solution-oriented questions are solutions developed by the coach and offered in the form of a question. We know we aren't supposed to tell, so we cleverly pose our advice with a question mark on the end.
Whenever I fall into solution-oriented questioning, I know that this has happened:
I’m coaching the problem, not the person.
My curiosity and listening have fallen off.
My self-management skills have been gutted by my ego, and I’ve stepped away from humility.
And whenever any one of these pops in, I lose both my credibility as well as my own effectiveness as a coach. I need to regroup, get my self-management back in order, and get right back in there. We all slip, but it is how we get back up and keep going that is important.
I must confess that if I see that a client is about to commit to a very expensive, very painful lesson that I know from personal, first-hand experience will not work, I’ll switch to mentoring. However, I make that switch only with the client’s permission.
Alternatives to Solution-Oriented Questions
Own it! If you know that you’ve slipped from coaching to consulting, be clear with your client, letting them know that you’ve slipped. I have yet to meet the client that is not appreciative of honesty and candor, especially when it shows that the coach is human and fallible. As an added bonus, owning it increases psychological safety and trust.
Make the switch! Ask the client’s permission to switch from coaching to mentoring, and then make it clear when you’re sliding back to your coach role. The client will be less confused both in the moment as well as going forward as to what to expect from you.
Back to basics! Keep a deck of powerful, transformational questions near you. This way, when you know that you’d slid into solution-oriented questions, you have a good, at-the-ready question to help you.
Leading Questions
And this brings me to…leading questions. (You might also think of these as loaded questions.) While you may think of lawyers and witnesses, leading/loaded questions make me think of my own biases. If I’m asking those types of questions, then I’m listening with my biases, and that is never a good thing.
A leading question or suggestive interrogation is a question that suggests the particular answer or contains the information the examiner is looking to have confirmed.
Again, many thanks to Wikipedia. Here are some examples of leading questions:
What kind of problems are you having with your manager? (Wait—did I even say that I was having problems with my manager?)
How far through the sprint did the team progress before they brought in extra stories? (Um, did we? Did we start without those stories?)
How happy are we as a team with our communication skills? (Well, um, are we even happy about them?)
When I begin to ask leading questions, my biases are getting the best of me. I’m listening to confirm what I think that I already know, not listening to learn. I need to keep my biases in check—particularly my confirmation bias—and move back into open-minded, open-hearted curiosity.
Alternatives to Leading Questions
These modified questions are neutral version of the leading questions presented above:
How would you describe your relationship with your manager? (See, no suggestiveness of problems with the manager.)
At what point did the team bring in extra stories? (Again, this question is neutral. It’s not accusing the team of bringing in extra work.)
How do we feel as a team about our communication skills? (Here, we let the team decide how they feel, not prime the pump by dropping “happy” in there.)
Wrapping It Up
It was during coaching supervision earlier this year that I received the feedback, “Less judgement, more curiosity.” Ouch. Also, I think Uncle Walt is basically saying the same thing here.
Be curious, not judgmental. —Walt Whitman
Thanks, Uncle Walt, but still—ouch! That was hard but ultimately necessary feedback for me to hear, and I try to step into it every day. It keeps me humble.
I hope that you make mistakes, and I hope that you make lots of them. They are the best and most effective learning tool out there. But I also want you to make new mistakes, mistakes that are different than the examples that I bring forth here. I want to learn from you, not just point out my own pitfalls. By sharing what we learn, that’s how we can move forward more quickly.
As they are every month, the image used for this blog post was captured by Linda Nickell on one of her recent adventures. Connect with her on Instagram as @coznlinda, or join in on Wednesday evenings for her Happiness Hour. Details, upcoming presentations, and links to past recordings can be found on her site. You can also find her on YouTube.