Tag Archives: coaching questions
When “Powerful Coaching Questions” are Truly Powerful and When They’re Not
What makes powerful coaching questions so powerful? Sometimes coaches get so carried away asking “powerful coaching questions” prior to thoroughly establishing trust, understanding where our clients are, and learning their vocabulary. I believe if we truly want our questions to be powerful, we need to ask them when our clients are ready to hear them. We also need to use the kind of words and phrases our clients can relate to. That takes getting to know your client first. Otherwise, even the most “powerful” question falls flat and is not powerful at all. When we take a coaching course, these questions are a great learning tool and they sound awesome out of context. However, when using them with clients, we need to trust that the “right” question will come up when we commit to being in the moment. And when we force these “powerful” questions, they feel contrived and almost superficial. They often stick out like a sore thumb, feel out of place and are often foreign to the language their client can relate to. It also results in lack of trust between you and your client. So, to ask a powerful coaching question – stay in the moment and listen deeply. The right — and most powerful — questions will generally come out organically. And the question that is the most powerful for one person in a given moment, may be totally ineffective for another. What are your thoughts?
Copyright © Marianna Lead. All Rights Reserved in ALL Media.
What not to ask your new coaching client
There are a lot of questions that coaches ask, thinking that it may help them know their clients better. One of these questions is: “What are you passionate about?” Some clients may like this question and respond readily and others may feel very uncomfortable — as “passion” may not be part of their active vocabulary. Instead of asking questions of this sort, I prefer to ask a new client to share with me anything they think might be good for me to know to gain a deeper understand of them – which ultimately will make our coaching relationship more effective. And, as they share with me, I’ll ask questions that feel right in the moment, fit their vocabulary, and make sense in the flow of our conversation. But most of all… I listen…
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part III
Here’s another interesting point that some coaches bring up about the use of the “feelings”question. They remind us that people naturally have different learning channels and for those who are more visual or auditory, the more effective questions may be, “What are you seeing?” for a visual client and “What does it say to you?” for an auditory one. Even though these questions expand awareness, they are not focusing clients directly on how they feel. I don’t think it matters much even if we were to ask “how do you feel” question of someone who is more auditory or visual. In this context people are well aware that we are really asking about their emotional state of being and not about their sense of touch/feel. Not ever in my coaching experience, a response to “What are you feeling now?” was “I’m feeling the breathe coming from my window.” or “I don’t understand what you mean.” Sometimes certain schools of thought in coaching make very simple things too complex artificially.
I also noticed that what coaches ask to create client’s awareness depends largely on their coach training. As coaches, we must be aware to what degree accessing emotions is important to making effective decisions and/or how to help their clients to access their emotions. For scientific perspective, we can refer to the work and many books of Antonio Damasio, Gregg Braden, and others.
In attempt to avoid the “feeling” question, some coaches suggest asking “What are your thoughts?” instead. Even though it’s a great question on its own,”What are your thoughts?” invites your client to access their thinking and not their emotions/feelings. So, the intention and meaning behind these two questions are different. Granted, some people are not very much in touch with their feelings, but that is even more of a reason to help them “get there” on their journey of self-discovery. And, you can ask it differently. For instance, you can ask, “What’s coming up for you now?” This would open up a coaching conversation to either accessing clients’ feelings and/or thinking.
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Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part II
People talk to their hairdressers and bartenders about feelings – why shouldn’t they be able to share them with their coach? And, in turn, why a coach should look for other words to substitute the word “feel” with?
As I’m having many conversations with a variety of experienced coaches, even though all agree that developing awareness around one’s emotions is important, many insist on staying away from that word. One of the main reasons that they offer is that it may remind our clients of therapy.
I don’t agree with that at all. Since when therapy has a copyright on that word? Of course, we don’t want to use any words that are jargon-like, industry-specific, and may not be understood or misunderstood by our clients. However, that’s not the case here. We use the word “feel” every day in our lives and have used it before therapy as an industry even existed. It’s not a “therapy” word; it’s just a word. Should we cut it out from our coaching vocabulary just because it is “popular” in therapy? Also, I doubt that people who are in therapy are going to be attracted to coaching. And, once we clarify with our clients what coaching is and what it isn’t from the very beginning, there should be no misunderstanding or confusion about that.
To my delight, some top-notch executive coaches believe that it’s totally okay to use the word “feel”. They make a very good point that it’s not so much the word that we use that matters as the intention behind using it. They say that the more up the leadership ladder you go, the more being able to access, recognize and manage your feelings becomes important. And as they work with CEO’s across the globe, interpersonal skills and EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotent) become the focus of their coaching conversations.
And, to prevent your clients from telling a long story about how they feel, one MCC coach suggest asking, “If you’d use 1-2 words to describe how you feel, what would they be?” I think it’s an excellent question. And, even if we do get their “external” feelings only – that would serve as a jumping board for a deeper coaching conversation and discovery for a client. Also, I think that the purpose of us asking that question is not only to deepen the discussion and to create more awareness, but also to be in curiosity to understand and to know how and what our client feels.
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for this and other exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part I
On my journey to MCC (Master Certified Coach) credentialing with ICF (Int’l Coach Federation), I’m having conversations with many MCC coaches about their views of coaching as well as getting their direct feedback on my coaching.
As a result, I’m really surprised at how many different opinions I’ve collected about asking a simple question “How do you feel about that?”
It looks like everyone agrees that feelings are important, but many feel (no pun intended) that asking that question is a bad coaching choice.
Some feel that the “feeling” question is not being specific enough. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Wouldn’t that be the very reason to ask it – so that our client could have the space to reflect and identify his/her feeling and make it specific? It’s up to our clients to identify their feelings and make them specific, it’s not up to us. It’s about increasing their awareness to how they feel. And, if they have difficulty identifying their feeling/s – that’s going to serve as a great indicator in terms of their ability or a lack of it to identify what they feel & their EQ awareness, which they can choose to focus and work on with their coach upon that discovery.
It gets better… Since, according to them, this question is not specific enough, they suggest asking “What are you thinking?” instead. Does that make any sense? In what way can it possibly be more specific? We are just asking our clients to access their thinking instead of feelings – that’s all. “Thinking” is just as general as “Feeling” in that context, isn’t it? What am I missing here?
And some coaches say that we shouldn’t ask that question because some clients may not know how to access their feelings. According to ICF we must view our clients as “whole, creative and resourceful”. Wouldn’t anticipating that your clients wouldn’t know what they feel suggests a lack of believe that your clients are really “whole”? A person who is whole should be able to access both their thinking AND feelings. We are not robots, we are human beings. Trusting that your client can only access thinking and not feeling, is like saying that they are half whole or, even worst, not human enough. Only humans – as opposed to computers (built on logic and void of feelings) or animals (have feelings but can’t think them through) – can not only have feelings, but also are able to use their thinking to analyze them.
Another BIG concern is that if we ask about “feelings”, we’ll get into the realm of therapy. I don’t believe it’s the case. However, it’s getting too long for one blog post. To be continued…
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for this and other exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.