104 Improve your Communication Skills
The coach’s role is to ask questions. Instructing will tend to
generate a minimal response: the action carried out, but little
more. Asking a question focuses attention, increases awareness
and encourages the coachee to take responsibility. Asking
questions also helps the coach. Instead of forging ahead with a
sequence of orders, the coach can use questions to follow the
coachee’s train of thought, their interest or enthusiasm, their
emotional reactions – and adapt the coaching accordingly.
The most effective questions are those that encourage the
coachee to think for themselves. Questions that point up the
coachee’s ignorance or subservience are unhelpful. The best
coaching questions are open, non-judgemental and
specific
. Use
the ‘W’ questions: ‘What? Where? When? Who? How many? How
much?’ Avoid ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ They will tend to imply
judgement, analysis or criticism: all of them forms of second-
stage thinking. If necessary, ‘Why?’ can become ‘What were the
reasons for’ and ‘How?’ might be better put as ‘What were the
steps that…?’
During second-stage thinking, the same kinds of questions
can serve to focus on what the coachee will do next, how, when,
where and so on.
The Ladder of Inference is a useful tool in this process.
Walking the coachee down the ladder from beliefs or
assumptions to specific observations will encourage a wider
awareness; walking up the ladder through meanings, judgement
and belief to action will strengthen motivation and a sense of
responsibility for future actions.
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