The information in this section is freely drawn from the exceptional work of Sir John Whitmore, a colleague of mine, and David Hemery, an Olympic gold medalist. John Whitmore’s excellent book Coaching for Performance, written some 15 years ago, covers in much more detail some of what I summarize here. David Hemery has recently put together an extremely useful book entitled How to Help Children Find the Champion Within Themselves. It is written for parents, teachers and coaches who want to learn how to ask better questions and grow and develop the children under their care. Another excellent book is Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations.
Consulting is a style of communicating that did not come easily to me. Trained as a schoolteacher, I had learned how to do a lot of lecturing and telling, and only listened when it was absolutely necessary or when the other person insisted. It’s really amazing that I have been as well received as a coach as I have, given this gaping hole in my communication skills. It says something about learning environments that many organizations still welcome someone, usually a so-called expert, who comes in and “tells.” John Whitmore was the first to awaken me to the incredible potential for developing others through consulting, that I, with my dominant-speaker style, had missed.
The idea outlined in Coaching for Performance—that you could trigger self-awareness and self-responsibility in the other person simply by asking effective questions and listening actively—was merely intriguing at first. But it moved quite quickly out of the intellectual realm and into the practical one when I was suddenly and unexpectedly called on to participate at the World Synchronized Swimming Championship in Zurich, Switzerland, as a performance coach in sport psychology with the Canadian team. I was at home packing my bags in preparation for the trip when the phone rang. Sheilagh Croxon, former Olympic coach, informed me that neither assistant coach would be on the flight that day due to medical issues, and that I was to tell the head coach, Biz Price, when I got to the airport. When I gave Biz the news, she said to me, “I guess you’re it!” Was my skinny, six-foot-three, 160-pound frame, which had little synchronized swimming experience (as a swimmer, at least), ready for this?
Fortunately for me, synchronized swimmers spend a fair amount of time underwater, and while they were down there, Biz would turn to me and say things like “Jessica is on her nose.” I took that to mean she wasn’t straight up and down in her spiral, but to be on the safe side I simply said to Jessica, “You’re on your nose,” and when she agreed, “Yes, I felt that,” I would ask a question like “What normally causes you to be on your nose?” And after the explanation, I would ask, “What sorts of things might you do to correct that?” Jessica would self-correct, Biz would glance over and comment that it was much better, and when Jessica came up for air I would tell her, “That’s a lot better!”
This went on for a few practices until reinforcement assistant coaches arrived. I might add that for the first few practices the swimmers were amazed at how much I knew about synchronized swimming! My cover was blown when one of the swimmers was above water and heard Biz give me the correction. But that didn’t matter, because in the meantime I had made the discovery that asking them how they thought they had performed a particular action and, if it wasn’t to their satisfaction, how they would improve on it, was an amazingly effective style of coaching. There is tremendous power in asking effective questions and then being fully present—actively listening—for the response.
Nothing focuses attention like a question. I first learned this when I was teaching tennis. For 10 years I ran a tennis school in Toronto, and like most tennis instructors I was constantly telling people to watch the ball. It wasn’t until I attended a workshop with Timothy Gallwey, who wrote The Inner Game of Tennis, that I clued in to the fact that if I wanted the students to focus on the ball it was better to ask questions about the ball than simply to give them the command to “watch the ball.” When I started asking questions like “Which way is the ball spinning when it hits the ground?” or “What type of ball are you hitting?” I made the startling discovery that in order to answer my questions, they had to watch the ball! It wasn’t the command “watch the ball” that focused attention, it was a question—and as long as I kept good questions coming, they stayed focused on the ball.
This is as true in business as it is in sport. Questions such as “What were the figures on that last report?” “What could we do to further improve the service here?” “Where could we simplify this process?” “What do you think the impact of that will be?” “Where do you think we could focus our energies?” uncover new awareness and bring greater clarity to the issue. When you ask questions such as these you immediately begin to build awareness. Seeing things with greater clarity is often enough to motivate people to take more timely and effective action.
The other advantage of questioning is that it builds responsibility. If my only goal is to assign responsibility to get the job done, I could just say, “You are responsible for this.” “You do that.” But much better and many more purposes are served if I say, “Who will take this one on?” “How confident are you that you can complete this on time?” “Is there any element you are unsure of?” “What obstacles might present themselves?” “When can you have it done?”
When the primary interaction is through questions, it helps you, as the coach, to find out if the people you are coaching have clarity and are on track. The questions and their answers also give them influence over their own actions and ownership of the issue at hand. By asking questions rather than offering solutions you are also giving them a form of recognition, which can be much more meaningful than praise.
Because you are trying to develop self-responsibility and awareness in this other person, the words you choose and the tone and body language with which you deliver them will be important. The most effective questions begin with words that seek to quantify—what, when, where, who, and how—which you generally qualify into phrases like how much, how many, how often. When you are trying to uncover a block, solve a problem or implement a solution, the one word to avoid using is why. “Why” is ineffective in these situations because it pushes the person into defensiveness and analysis—two states that are counterproductive to what you’re trying to accomplish. Instead of saying, for example, “Why did you produce a month-end summary like this?” use phrases such as “What were the reasons for producing the month-end summary in this new format?” By rephrasing the question you get some understanding of the thinking and reasoning behind what they did. You will see how they organize their thoughts. For a coach with a strong developmental bias, this insight into their inner world is invaluable.
Generally speaking, when using this more consultative style in developing another person, you follow their train of thought. If you think they are off course you simply ask another question: “In what way is this connected to what we are talking about?” You may discover from their answer that this actually is connected to the issue at hand. You may get some valuable clarity on steps that need to be completed before they can tackle the end goal. On other occasions when you ask the question, they may become aware that they are off course and get redirected back on course.
There will be other times when, to you at least, there is an obvious solution they have not mentioned. Again, because you are being developmental and trying to build self-responsibility and self-awareness in the other person, don’t jump in and immediately tell them what they should do. Instead, choose to ask a question. “I noticed that you didn’t mention X as a possible solution; are there reasons for that?” I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve asked that question only to discover that my “solution”—the one I thought of in the first 10 minutes of speaking to them—turned out to be one they had tried much earlier and found did not work. (In these instances I was always glad I had phrased it as a question rather than just blurting out my idea. Otherwise, they might well have thought, “Does he think I’m an idiot? If he could think of that in the first 10 minutes of our meeting, doesn’t he realize I thought of it long ago?” and I would have lost their trust as well as credibility as a coach.)
Questions