I cannot remember a time when asking questions was not at the heart of my work. Whether as a trainee, as an investigator, as a team leader or as a manager. There was always something I needed to know and understand to get the work done. And I asked questions of those who were better informed so that I could learn from them. I was asking questions to serve what I needed.

When I started to coach, I used my questioning skills without consciously thinking what I was doing. My coachees wanted something to happen, for them to learn new skills or improve existing ones. So I asked them to understand better what it was they wanted so I could give it to them. It was only later that I realised that I was asking question to serve what they needed. And in fact, still later, I came to understand that I needed to ask questions that really made my coachee (or mentee) think, which led them to learn a bit more about themselves, and “to accept the sometimes difficult process of being stretched by difficult questions.” *

Asking basic questions with intent

There are two basic types of question; open and closed.

• Open questions are aimed at getting a full and expansive response from the person being asked, to encourage them to talk and give a detailed answer using their full knowledge and experience.

• Closed questions are aimed at getting a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, or to give one of a limited range of options.

Both are appropriate but in different circumstances. When we don’t know about something then open questions are the only way to get what we want. But when we need to test our own understanding then closed question are the best way to do that. Here’s some examples;

OPEN

• What do you do in your current job?

• How do you do that?

• What’s your reason for asking to be coached?

CLOSE

• Is [xxx] correct?

• What year were you born?

• Have you ever been coached?

A good set of open questions is summarised by ‘TED’;

• Tell me…

• Explain to me…

• Describe to me...

But more important than the type of question you are asking is the reason for asking it because as their coach/mentor, I’m there to help my client learn about themselves so that they can, in the end, answer their own question. Before that can happen, I must understand what their situation is. Open questions are perfect for that task. The first task is to understand the detail that underlies their current situation, and so to allow our client to understand that as well. I’m still dealing with facts; where did things happen, who did what and when.

Given that this will happen early in the coaching/mentoring relationship, being too direct is a real danger, because it can feel like an interrogation. After exploring their perception of the situation using TED questions, I might then go on to ask how it felt for them and what they think might have happened if they had done it differently. This could help the to reflect on what they actually did, increasing their awareness of themselves.

Asking appropriate questions that fits with context

I can now progress to asking questions about how things happened; what skills were used, or not used, or could be used to better effect. This is now moving from facts to less concrete things, like the skills and capabilities of our client, their strengths and weaknesses. This is a more sensitive territory. Yet through the questions asked that’s driven with the intent of helping, albeit they might be hard to answer, we’re creating a relationship with trust at its heart, and from my experience this has been a positive outcome as my client tends to be more willing to explore them.

We do need to check that we have understood what our client has told us. This can be done during the exploration/fact-finding phase by asking a closed question- ‘just let me check my understanding, you do…’ We can also do that by reflecting their words back to them- ‘Have I got this right, you said…’ This has the amazing effect of allowing our client to hear themselves. That allows them to evaluate their own perception of the situation (that’s coach/mentor and client) and often they discover they have been making an unjustified assumption. Then again, if I feel that there is an implicit assumption but it’s not clear, I can add, ‘can we explore that a bit further?’ Not only am I getting their permission, this also allows us to dig a bit deeper and offer more opportunities for our client to examine what they really feel about the issue.

I’ve also got to add a word of warning about using ‘why?’. This is a question that can be understood at a superficial level, or more deeply and personally. ‘Why did you do that?’ can be answered with little detail; ‘I felt it was the right thing to do.’ OR ‘It was the right thing to do’. This latter answer is defensive because the client is receiving the why question as a challenge to what may be deeply held beliefs. That might work later in the relationship when trust has been established. But early on it might damage the growth of that trust. Use ‘why’ but with care. Often we can get more by asking for the reason behind an action- ‘What was your reason for doing that?’ is a gentler and less emotive question. It avoids ‘why’ which is short, to the point and potentially judgement-laden, especially when delivered without sufficient empathy.

Asking smart questions that focuses on outcomes

And then, having looked inwards, we can ask our client to think about what actions they could take to move themselves towards their desired state. This is the time for hypothetical questions. Ask them to ‘Imagine…’ This is a uniquely powerful question, because it has no limits, and with a bit of prompting can produce many options. This is often described as ‘brainstorming’; a form of discussion where a group generates ideas without being critical about them, at least at first. The criticism of the generated options comes next. The result is that options that would have been dismissed without much thought now get to be given more time. And sometimes they prove to be winners. (If you have read Daniel Kahneman’s book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ you will understand immediately why that is so. If you haven’t read it then I recommend it as it’s very readable, insightful and immensely thought-provoking.)

I’ll say a little about the ‘non-directive’ principal, which lies at the heart of my coaching practice. Implicit in all of this is the idea that coaches (maybe not quite as much if we are mentoring) are not there to provide our client with answers. They provide their own answers, helped by our questions. The focus of our questions is always to get them to understand themselves more. In doing so they will own their answer, which means they are more likely to act to address their issue. Even as a mentor we can just describe our own experience, or as a coach share a range of experience, to help broaden their ways of thinking. That is very different from telling them what to do.

Then there are the types of question that we must avoid. Long-winded and multiple questions leave the client confused, and that won’t get them thinking about themselves because they’ll be worrying about what we really mean. The focus moves from them to us, and that’s definitely what we don’t want to happen. Then there are leading and loaded questions. These are different, but for now, all we need to know is that they are asked to get a response that the questioner wants, often with subtle (or not so subtle) hints in the question itself. These questions are the very opposite of what we want to achieve as coaches and mentors.

The value of asking the right questions at the right time

It’s a personal view, drawn from my experience and study, so there is bound to be room for improvement and change. I’ve considered fact-finding, then exploration of the issue and then to generation of options, as a natural sequence of questions. There are no hard and fast rules. I believe that we can move from one area to another as long as it is helping our client to answer their question, and this can involve some trial and error too.  What’s most important to me though, is my desire to help AND to act non-directively so that our client leans more about themselves and comes to answer their own questions

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Reference: *from ‘Coaching and Mentoring- practical techniques for developing learning and performance’ 3rd edition, by Parsloe and Leedham, Kogan Page 2017