46 What Makes a Question Powerful? There are many things that make a coaching question powerful. They typically have one or more of the following components: Stems from genuine curiosity Stimulates reflective thinking and conversation Are thought-provoking Surfaces underlying assumptions and limiting beliefs Invites creativity Demands innovative thought Unearths new possibilities Generates energy and forward movement Stays with the coachee Evokes more questions Constructing Powerful Questions How a question is constructed can make all the difference in what it evokes from the coachee and its level of impact. There are three key elements to remember in constructing powerful questions. 1. Use open-ended questions. An open-ended question demands thinking. It requires the coachee to reach within to explore for an answer. In doing so, the coachee becomes acquainted with their own resourcefulness and wisdom. There is recognition that they have the answer within them. When questions are closed, the coachee can answer with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without any exploration or thinking. In coaching, questions are almost always open-ended with very few exceptions and almost always begin with ‘What’, ‘How’, ‘When’ and ‘Who’. ‘Why’ is almost never used (see #2 ). OPEN-ENDED QUESTION What changes are you prepared to make to reach this goal? CLOSED-ENDED QUESTION Are you prepared to make changes to reach this goal? 2. Keep questions clean. When questions are clean of assumptions and judgments, they automatically set the coachee into forward thinking and exploration. The coachee is the one doing the work of defining and clarifying answers for themselves versus explaining or justifying to the coach. This is the reason coaches rarely, if ever, begin a question with ‘why’. It’s equally as important to keep questions clean from leading the coachee in a particular direction. When the coach leads the coachee into an answer with a leading question, it suggests the coach does not trust the coachee’s resourcefulness. This in turn causes the coachee to question or marginalize their own resourcefulness. This diminishes the essence of encouragement and creates a dependency on the coach to lead the coachee into a way of thinking versus making the coachee do the work. CLEAN QUESTION What will be your first step? LEADING QUESTION Will your first step be to outline the budget? PART FOUR - THE 5 CORE COACHING SKILLS
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