Coaching Questions

Coaching Questions are open-ended and non-leading. They should be appropriate to the stage of the coaching process you are in. Here are some that I have found useful.

Initiating

• What are you thinking about?
• What’s on your mind?

Information Gathering

• Let’s step back for a moment. What precipitated this?
• What’s the background on this?
• How would you summarize the issue?
• What makes this something that needs to be addressed?
• How does this fit into the big picture?
• Why is this top of mind for you right now?

Expanding

• Tell me more.
• And?
• What else?

Identifying Potential Outcomes

• What will success look like?
• What would failure look like?
• And what would you like to have happen?

Exploring and Discovering Options

• What options do you see?
• What paths do you see to achieving your goals?
• Who or what else could you leverage here?
• What’s the [ bravest / craziest / least likely to work /most fun / most surprising] approach to try here?
• If you have a hero that you think would be relevant in this situation, what would they do?
• What could you apply here from similar situations in the past?
• What would you do if you had a magic wand?

Focusing, Narrowing, and Planning

• What’s your recap of the options we’ve discussed?
• How do the various options we’ve discussed stack up?
• Out of the various options we’ve discussed, what are you leaning towards?
• Tell me your next step and when you will take it

One way to get used to using open and non-leading questions is to try “question of the day.” Pick one or two of the coaching questions above, or a question that you have used in the past that is open and non-leading. Try it in conversation throughout the day as appropriate. Try a different question every day. After a while, the questions will become a natural part of your coaching conversations.

A quick activity to get your mind started down this path is to play the coaching question game. Here are four potential questions. Guess which are coaching questions and which are leading, closed, or both. Answers follow directly after.

Questions

1. What’s the background on this?
2. Do you think they need to have more focus?
3. What’s the best way for me to take this off your hands?
4. What makes this something that needs to be addressed?

Answers

1. What’s the background on this?
   Good question
2. Do you think they need to have more focus?
   Closed: has a yes/no answer. Leading: assumes a need for more focus. 
3. What’s the best way for me to take this off your hands?
   Leading: assumes the issue should be delegated.  
4. What makes this something that needs to be addressed?
   Good question 

Next: What Does an Agile Coach Do All Day? Part 1