How to Create Great Questions to Coach Others - and Yourself

In a world in which we often just skip across the surface of topics like so many flat stones, it can be difficult to just pause and go deeper – to ask ourselves not just where we’re headed and how we’ll get there, but also why we’re headed there and what might happen if we chose a different course.

In her coaching role, the YES! Leader also needs to avoid getting drawn into this “full speed ahead” mode by asking deepening questions and truly listening to her coachee – and encouraging the coachee to listen to himself as well in order to get to that deeper level of reflection.

By making almost anything immediately available at our fingertips, technology often feeds this urge to keep moving forward as fast as possible. But it doesn’t have to be that way – if we can find ways to control the technology instead of letting it control us.  Here is one such example I recently created that utilizes a common software application to help coaches create better and deeper questions.

First, note that there are several different kinds of questions that a coach might ask:

INFORMATIONAL: These are the Who-What-When-Where questions that can help clarify the facts and figures in the coachee’s story. “You mentioned Mary – what is her role?” Or “What happened after she said that?”

ANALYTICAL: These ask the coachee to filter through the facts of his story and make some assessments and choices. For example: “Of all the issues you mentioned, which is the most important for you right now?” Or “What is the quickest, lowest-risk action you could take?”

SPECULATIVE: These ask the coachee to mentally project into the future and contemplate the potential outcomes of certain actions. “If you took that action, how do you think it would impact your issue?” “If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do?”

EMOTION-ORIENTED: These are feelings-based questions that can help the coachee reflect on his motivators, desires, or concerns. “Why is resolving this issue so important to you?” “When you succeed at your effort, how will it make you feel?”

Also keep in mind that powerful coaching involves listening for and inquiring into things the coachee doesn’t say – such as a metaphor, analogy, or strong choice of words that could indicate more than meets the ear. For example, if the coachee describes another person as creating a lot of “drama” in a situation, that might be a cue to ask: “What do you mean by ‘drama’?”

The activity is conducted by utilizing the whiteboard feature of a web conferencing tool such as WebEx or Microsoft Live Meeting.  You can utilize this in the context of a virtual training exercise for coaches, mentors, or facilitators. Proceed as follows:

·         Instruct each participant to tell a 2-3 minute story on any topic he wants. (Some typical topics: My first job, my biggest success, my hometown.)

·         Before a participant tells his story, display a whiteboard and have the participant minimize his screen.

·         As the participant tells the story, the other participants use the whiteboard to type questions that seek to dive more deeply into certain parts of the story. (Supply the participants with the categories listed above ahead of time.)

·         When the participant finishes the story, have him view the questions on the whiteboard. He can answer as many as he likes right then but doesn’t have to answer them all.

·         Repeat the process for all participants.

·         After all have finished, ask each participant to identify one thing (no matter how small) he or she learned about himself or herself during the activity.

For example, in a recent session I conducted, I offered up my own story of my first job as a book editor for a large publishing company. Here are some of the questions the group generated:

·         How did this work experience influence your future career experiences?

·         What about reading excites you the most?

·         If you could go back and take one aspect of that job and apply it to your current job, what would that be?

·         If you could write your own book, what would your first book be about?

·         You mentioned your first boss was a great mentor – what did she do that reflected great mentorship?

Practicing this activity can help the YES! Leader listen for more than just the facts of a story. It can help her and the coachee listen for the meaning that often lurks beneath the facts.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

The YES! Leader can also use this exercise to help her engage in self-coaching. I came away from the above session in a decidedly reflective mood as I thought, in particular, about the parts of my editorial job that I could see in my current job. More significant, though, were the parts that I didn’t see in my current job but would like to see more of – as well as the parts that I do currently have that I didn’t have in that first job.

What would happen if you devised a set of questions that you could ask yourself every day to stay mindful about, not just the events of your life, but the meaning of those events? For example:

·         What is my purpose?

·         What did I do today that did/didn’t align with my purpose?

·         What strength did I utilize today?

·         How did I improve myself today?

·         How did I get in my own way today?

·         What word describes how I feel right now?

·         What will I do differently tomorrow?

Daylight Saving Time: Giving the World More Time to Play

I’ve been reading an excellent book which recounts the history of a twice-a-year ritual that we now take for granted but which was once highly controversial and widely derided.  From the title – Saving the Daylight, by David Prerau – you can gather that I’m talking about the “Spring Forward, Fall Back” mantra that guides us as we reset our clocks in observance of Daylight Saving Time.

It may be hard to believe, but until the mid 1800s people used to set their clocks according to the tracing of the sun across the sky. Think of the implications: When it was noon in Chicago, it would be 12:17 in Toledo, 12:24 in Cleveland, and 12:31 in Pittsburgh.  But not only that: Using “sun time” meant that tomorrow’s “noon” in Chicago would occur a few seconds later or earlier (depending on the season) than today’s “noon.” As a result, people had to adjust their clocks daily to keep up with the sun’s travels. (To help residents coordinate their daily adjustments, cities would often lower a large “time ball” from a high elevation at a designated celestial time – a practice which continues in vestigial form every New Year’s Eve in Times Square.)

This staggering of clock time across the globe worked fine in an age when travel and communications were highly localized. But the advent of the railroads in the mid 19^th Century changed everything. Expanded cross-country travel drove the need to standardize clock time across a wider region to accommodate and normalize rail schedules. Thus the advent of “standard time” – and Standard Time Zones.

Standard time did not emerge without its detractors – primarily, purists who abhorred man’s departure from the natural order of sun time. On the whole, though, people quickly adjusted to the new order and came to see its benefits.

Then, in the early 20^th Century, came the next phase of a clock-driven world: Daylight Saving Time. The DST movement was started in England by an enlightened few who noted the “wasted” hours of summer daylight between sunrise and most people’s wake-up time. How much better, they thought, to move the clock forward so that the health-giving benefits of the early-morning sun could be experienced at the end of the day?

Many people – even those who had adjusted to Standard Time - scoffed at the DST idea as an attempt to “trick” the summer sun into thinking it was rising later and setting later. Even after DST was widely adopted as a temporary measure (primarily as an energy-saver) during World War I, the fight over DST continued into the 1920s – especially in the United States, which immediately repealed DST at war’s end.

Now why (you might ask) would anyone besides rigid traditionalists object to “moving” an hour of sunlight to the end of the day, when most people would get better use from it? The answer lies with a key group who objected on purely practical grounds: Farmers.

This powerful bloc pointed out that, even though early-morning sunlight was wasted for most people, it certainly wasn’t wasted for them. Cows didn’t care what the clock said: They rose with the sun and needed to be milked.  Farmers were thus at a great disadvantage in trying to coordinate their schedules with a world (primarily with dairy shippers) that was running an hour later.

What I find most fascinating about this part of the story relates to the argument on the other side. In the face of solid objections from diligent, salt-of-the-earth, hard-toiling rural denizens, proponents of DST pointed to the benefits of … play.

The main British advocate of DST, William Willett, noted:

“The brief period of daylight now at our disposal between the hours of work and sleep is frequently insufficient for most forms of outdoor recreation, but the daily addition of one hour … after 6 P.M. will multiply, several times, the usefulness of that which we already have.”

Among the pastimes that people could have more opportunity to pursue, said Willett, were golfing and rifle practice. Extolling the virtues of DST, another proponent summarized its purpose as “bringing the hours of work and pleasure nearer to the sunlight.”

Somehow I doubt that an argument that pitted play against work would have prevailed even 30 years earlier.  DST was an idea whose time had come, I think, because people were starting to realize that there was more to life than just nose-to-the-grindstone industriousness – and that the rapid emergence of modern conveniences was providing the average working person something he not previously had: Spare time.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

One of the foundational behaviors of the YES! Leader’s ExporeFlexSupport model is something I’ve referred to as “the Wow!” – that is, actively seeking out and celebrating the sheer enjoyment to be had in your day-to-day activities. If you live in an area that observes Daylight Saving Time, do you just take the extra hour of sunlight for granted? Or do you capitalize on the possibilities that DST provides for you to experience "the Wow!"?

What would happen if you were to do the following?

·         Treat your time outside of work as an opportunity to rest, recharge, and recreate – rather than ruminate about work.

·         Bring some of that non-work time into your work time – by sharing (and encouraging others to share) the things about your life that motivate and energize you and give your life meaning.

·         Appreciate the things about your job that you really enjoy and that give you an opportunity to play to your strengths – and explore ways to do more of those things.

Don't Look Back! The Feedforward Approach to Success

I once attended a seminar on the topic of giving feedback, presented by a leadership consultant who had coached and advised several executive clients in his career.  During his presentation, the consultant described an interaction he once had with a company CEO who had just filmed a video speech for distribution to the company’s employees. The CEO asked the consultant for feedback on his performance in the video. The consultant said he responded as follows:

“I told him the truth. ‘You stank!’ I said. ‘You just stank!’”

I gather that the consultant had a good enough relationship with the CEO that he could get away with saying that. I also gather that the consultant’s message to us was: As a consultant/coach, you owe it to your clients to tell them the unvarnished truth.

Now, to the consultant’s credit, he also proceeded to say that he provided specific behavioral examples of what the CEO did wrong and could have done better. As I’ve noted before, feedback does no good unless it’s specific enough to guide the recipient to particular actions he needs to change. But I also wonder whether the CEO actually heard much of anything else the consultant had to say after being on the receiving end of such an odious (and odorous) judgment.

I think this situation is a good example of the potential downsides of trying to “help” someone by giving him feedback. The author and consultant Marshall Goldsmith makes the following (somewhat radical) observation about the nature of feedback:

“There is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: It focuses on the past, on what has already occurred – not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future.”

Goldsmith goes on to point out other problems with feedback – for example:

·         Feedback tends to overfocus on gaps, deficiencies, and shortcomings. “Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in ‘let me prove you were wrong,’” says Goldsmith. “This tends to produce defensiveness on the part of the receiver and discomfort on the part of the sender.”

·         No matter how much we remind ourselves that feedback is about our performance, not about us personally, in practice few people can make that fine distinction. As Goldsmith observes, “Almost all feedback is taken personally (no matter how it is delivered). People’s sense of identity is highly connected with their work. It is hard to give a dedicated professional feedback that is not taken personally. Personal critiques are often viewed as personal attacks.”

·         By focusing on the negative, feedback can reinforce the recipient’s sense of futility in the pursuit of improvement.  Says Goldsmith: “Feedback can reinforce a feeling of failure. How many of us have been ‘helped’ by a spouse, significant other, or friend who seems to have a near-photographic memory of our previous ‘sins’ that they share with us in order to point out the history of our shortcomings. Negative feedback can be used to reinforce the message, ‘this is just the way you are.’”

So does Goldsmith advocate that people just ignore those areas where a change in behaviors and actions could lead to improved performance?

Hardly. Instead, he proposes an alternative to feedback called “feedforward.” In essence, feedforward proceeds from the individual’s request for ideas for improvement in a very specific area. The person receiving the request then provides one or two quick ideas that the individual might consider trying out. The only reply permitted is “Thank you” – no discussion, no comment, and certainly no push-back (“I already tried that, and it didn’t work”). The individual then seeks to get as much feedforward input from as many people as she can, to create a database of ideas from which she can select.

According to Goldsmith, the advantages of the feedforward approach include:

·         Rather than getting stuck on the problems of the past, the individual focuses on future possibilities and begins to envision herself successfully changing her behavior.

·         The approach encourages positive, forward-looking thinking and keeps the individual’s mind on how she might be able to put one or more of the ideas into effect.

·         By proceeding from the individual’s request, the approach reinforces the idea that the individual ultimately has ownership of the issue and the selection (and implementation) of the idea.

·         By not permitting a response, the approach avoids the major downfall of most advice-giving, that is, the tendency of the recipient to bring up reasons why it won’t (or didn’t) work.

·         Unlike feedback, which can really only be given by someone very familiar with the individual’s past performance, feedforward ultimately can be given by anyone!

I think Goldsmith’s feedforward approach is consistent with the “coaching through the gap” approach I’ve described previously. Both methods start with a “current state” – the identification of something that the individual wants to change – but very quickly move toward a vivid envisioning of a desired future goal. The bulk of the coaching interaction then focuses, not on why things are the way they currently are, but on how to start moving toward that better future state as quickly as possible.

(The primary difference, I think, between feedforward and coaching through the gap: In the latter, the brainstorming of ideas for change should start with the coachee, to reinforce his ownership of the entire process. Only after the coachee has generated some ideas should the coach offer some feedforward ideas of his own.)

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

·         Is your approach to “helping” people primarily focused on giving them feedback as to things they’re not doing right? Do you get the sense that that approach is causing negativity, defensiveness, and a sense of futility?

·         In your coaching sessions, do you provide people an opportunity to first volunteer their own assessment of their performance and the areas in which they need to improve? Do you then give them a chance (through powerful questioning) to start populating the database of ideas for how they might act differently in the future? Only then do you start to contribute some ideas of your own?

·         What would happen if you – for your own development – asked several people to provide “feedforward” input for a behavior of yours that you’d like to change?