What are good coaching questions? (3.11)
"Great coaches ask questions which are not just veiled ways of giving the answers."
Great coaching questions are not "hidden directives." In this video, Ramesh and Kirstan offer examples of the questions coaches ask.
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RAMESH SRINIVASAN: When coaches ask questions, they ask it not knowing the answer ahead of time. These questions tend to be truly things that they don't understand as well and are meant to help the individual, and like I said, come from a place of positive, unconditional regard, truly to help the coachee. Great coaches ask questions which are not just veiled ways of being directive and giving the answers, but really using questions to explore things, even when they don't know the answers to those questions. You as a leader shouldn't be afraid to ask a question for which you don't know the answer, as long as you do it from a place of positive, unconditional regard, you should be able to explore things and be truly helpful to the coachee.
KIRSTAN MARNANE: Let me talk a little bit more about the questions, the kind of questions that a good coach asks. These are not hidden questions like, "Don't you think it would be better if you did x than doing y?" They're solution-focused questions that open up the coachee's mind. So, "What would it look like if this was incredibly successful for you?" And, "What resources would you call on if you could have anything you wanted here? What are your options?"
These kinds of questions, positive, solution-focused questions open up a coachee's mind and enable them to find answers that you, as a leader probably wouldn't be able to find for them. So one of the most powerful coaching questions that I have ever heard a leader say is, "That was really bad, what can we learn from this? What can you learn from this that you could apply to everything that comes after this?" That's a powerful coaching question.
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