INTRODUCTION
ASKING QUESTIONS IS NOT THE SAME AS INQUIRY
MANY POPULAR BOOKS, leadership actions, and coaching guidelines outline rules for asking good questions. Common rules include ask open questions; start with what, when, where, how, and who; and avoid why questions.
These suggestions are misleading.
Coaches and leaders spend more time trying to remember the questions they’re supposed to ask than paying attention to the person they are coaching.1 They end up “checklist coaching” to ensure their questions follow the model they were taught in coaching school or a leadership workshop, which is more frustrating for the client than helpful.
Not only do coaches spend more time in their own heads than listening, they make coaching more complex ...
Get Coach the Person, Not the Problem now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
