I’ve had the pleasure of having great coaches in my career. The great ones have consistently done one thing in common. Their coaching sessions were driven by asking questions not giving answers. Coaches who ask questions rather than give answers help the person being coached learn to develop a thought process that enables them to make better decisions. The single best coaching question to start a coaching session is “what was the outcome you were trying to achieve when you did X?”.
Why This Is the Single Best Coaching Question to Start a Coaching Session
Coaching isn’t just for problems. Coaching, done right, helps you avoid problems by unlocking their potential to maximize performance by helping them to learn rather than teaching them. Asking what was the expected outcome allows them to reverse engineer the thought process they used to execute the task and develop a better thought process in the future.
Coaching questions need to be open-ended questions that encourage engagement in the coaching session. Having the right coaching questions gets them to think through why they did what they did. Additionally they help them think through how that impacted the outcome. Coaching questions need to be designed in a way that encourages reflection and thinking through other ways to achieve the desired outcome.
Great follow-up questions that advance learning in the coaching session:
- How else could you have done that?
- What else have you tried so far?
- How have you handled this type of situation before? What was the outcome?
- In your opinion, how would you handle this differently next time?
- What resources do you need and how else can I support you around your efforts to do better next time?
When you give people space, time and attention to share their ideas, be heard and acknowledged it strengthens their confidence. It establishes a level of trust that is essential for great coaching to occur. Asking open-ended coaching questions is the best way to accomplish this coaching goal. As a result, the best way to start any coaching session is by using this question.
Last updated on September 29th, 2018 at 07:06 am
