The art of asking: the key to coaching

The basis of a coaching process are questions. Through them you get for the client to explore and deepen their own thinking to find out what he wants and how he can get it.

With the questions, the coachee is given the power that he has to get with his own resources to reach the goal that he wants to achieve. In each session, different questions are threaded together that generate, in turn, new ones and that what they do is generate before the client a range of options that he had not seen before and that will allow you to make decisions and, ultimately, take action.

• Related article: "How to improve communication in a coaching process: calibration and rapport"

The value of questions

One of the misconceptions that exist regarding coaching is to think that the job of a coach is simply to listen to the client and advise him and tell him what he has to do. Nothing is further from reality. A coach does listen, but not to not recommend, but to be able to ask the questions that he just needs to ask.

Of course, the questions in coaching are not designed to simply extract information from the coachee as if it were a simple interview. The questions in this case are aimed at making the client aware of their reality and to take responsibility for it. The answers generate new questions that create, in turn, new reflections and, thus, the learning path that is really a coaching process is outlined.

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What questions are raised in a coaching process?

Although almost any question is suitable to be asked in a coaching session as long as the coach believes that it will be helpful to the coachee, there are some that are not recommended to use:

• Closed yes or no questions. They can be useful for verifying information, but they are very limited because they do not allow any type of exploration.
• Questions that begin with 'Why???': with these the answers tend to be justifications and excuses. In coaching these are replaced by 'What for???', which connects the coachee with her motivation.
• Manipulative questions: those that have a critical component or are even made to get the answer you want.

In coaching, therefore, the most efficient questions are open, direct, those considered effective (what, when, who...), those who show interest (is there a reason for???). And, in short, any of those that in coaching are called powerful questions, that is, questions that do not have judgment, develop learning, stimulate reflection, challenge and help to act.

• Related article: "5 steps to resolve conflicts with Emotional Intelligence"

learn to ask questions

As we have seen, knowing how to ask questions appropriately is key to being a good coaching professional. Although we all know how to ask, we must work the process of asking the right questions in order to make customers reflect, realize and take action.

In our Master in Professional Coaching with IE and NLP Practitioner we place special emphasis on the art of asking being fully internalized by our students. To do this, we not only explain in detail the entire methodology of the coaching process, but we also carry out continuous practices so that they can really develop that ability and become effective coaches in their work professional.