coaching | leadingwithquestions

Four Goal-Setting Questions

20 12 2012

Guest Post By Calvin Guyer

Here are four critical goal-setting questions to ask:

What do you want?

When do you want it?

What are you willing to give up getting it?

Yes, I know that is only three questions, and no I don’t have a problem with math. But the fourth question, if uncovered at this stage, would not allow you to properly focus on the first three. Be patient.

How many times have we been told to set goals? We know about SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive). It’s not enough to want a new pair of tennis shoes. Rather, you want a new pair of size 9, blue, Nike running shoes with white laces–and you want those shoes by 5p.m. this Friday. My daughter just got a pair of those shoes so I thought that it would be a good example. It’s also a lot more specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time sensitive than, say, curing world hunger or eradicating polio.

So, we have answers to the first two questions: A new pair of size 9, blue, Nike running shoes with white laces (What do you want?) and this Friday (When do you want it?).

Now, what are you willing to give up getting those shoes? Time, money, or going without the Starbucks’ venti skinny caramel triple shot latte for the next three months? Really, what are you willing to give up? Maybe your goal needs for you to get “out of balance” for a period of time. This takes a sacrifice that could eat into family time or add a few strokes to your handicap. You have to decide but decide you must. This stage and the next stage (that elusive fourth question) are critical to the goal-setting process.

I worked with a guy for a while who would make phone calls to customers and keep track of every sale for the day. He would not stop making calls until he hit his commission goal for that day. He knew what he wanted (commissions), when he wanted it (by the end of the day), and what he was willing to give up (he literally would not leave his office until he hit the goal). Sometimes he was still dialing well after the others in the office had left for the evening.

Did he always meet his goal? Certainly not. But every day he made sacrifices in the pursuit, and he didn’t let fear of failure stop or slow him. And that is where we get the fourth question:

Are you willing to fail?

Let’s return to our goal–the Nike shoes. It’s a SMART goal, but is it a smart goal for you? The key to goal-setting is that you really have to stretch to reach the goal. I used to have a coffee cup that said, “What would you attempt today if you knew that you could not fail?” Real goals–big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs)–mean failure could happen. You don’t meet the sales goal for the year, the new cancer drug is a bust, and you got 20,000 feet up Mt Everest but had to turn around due to a storm. Still, you tried. And while the goal may not have been achieved, you stretched yourself in the process. You learned more about what you’re capable of, and that will serve you well and bring you confidence in the future.

Be willing to fail.

Calvin Guyer Executive Coach - developed his unique frame of reference as an executive coach through nearly three decades of military and corporate service. He has worked on highly complex engineering projects, as a financial advisor with Piper Jaffray and Merrill Lynch, and most recently in executive leadership as Resident Director for a Merrill Lynch office and Vice President of Think Mutual Bank where he led the Investment Services Department. You can connect at Calvin Guyer

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Stop Fixing, Start Coaching

17 12 2012

Excerpted from chapter 11 with the permission of the author & publisher of Work Happy – What Great Bosses Know by Jill Geisler

I’ve discovered among the many managers I’ve encountered:

There are too few coaches and too many fixers.

Fixers aren’t bad bosses mind you. They are responsible managers who care about quality, but they do far more telling than teaching. If there were a Fixer’s Creed, it would be this:

Bring me your problems and I will give you solutions. Show me your work and I will improve it, even if it means doing it for you. It’s my duty as a boss.

Fixers get the job done, but through micromanagement and control . Coaches learn to let go of all that and achieve even better results. How do I know? As I tell the managers in my workshops:

“I stand before you as a recovering fixer. If I could learn to be a coach, so can you.”

Three Sins of Fixers

Your more capable employees are frustrated. You take their good work and add your signature touches to it. Is it better? Probably. But now it’s not really theirs anyone – and you’ve undercut their important motivators: competence, progress, and autonomy. And don’t assume everything’s cool because they’ve never complained. It’s not that easy to criticize the boss..
Your less capable employees are protected. They don’t have to grow because you’re always there to fill their gaps. Their mediocre work actually looks pretty nice after you’ve tidied it up. You’ve trained them to rely on you to rescue them, and now they assume it’s your responsibility.
You get worn down. It’s tiring to be a fixer. You spend way too much time putting out brushfires in the daily workflow and not enough on strategy, long-range planning, innovation – or even thinking. And you just can’t figure out why some staffers still need help for the same issues, in spite of all your hard work.

That last point is very important. Being a fixer can lead to burnout. I want you to take better care of yourself. So I did just a little bit of editing ot hammer home my message. I fixed the Fixer’s Creed:

The Coach’s Creed:

Bring me your problems and I will help you discover your own solutions. Show me your work and I will improve it by coaching, but I won’t do it for you. It’s my duty as a boss.

I think that’s a change for the better. What do you think, coach?

Jill Geisler, as head of Poynter Institute Leadership and Management programs, guides managers from the novice to the veteran – toward success. In Poynter-based seminars, offsite workshops and within organizations, she brings humor and humanity to her teaching and coaching. She has conducted specialized training and coaching programs for scores of organizations in the U.S. and abroad and is in demand as a speaker on leadership issues, ethics, change management and the status of women in leadership.

You can find out more about Jill and her book at: Work Happy.

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Unstuck in 5

13 12 2012

Guest Post by Pam Smith

Everybody gets “stuck” once in a while. Even those who coach others on a regular basis can get stuck.

In preparation to instruct a group of counselors on how to use coaching as a tool in their profession, I used the letters in the word “STUCK” to identify 5 steps to getting “unstuck” and then provided a number of good questions to use for each step.

Here are the 5 steps:

Set the Focus
Talk about Options
Unleash a Plan
Check for Obstacles
Know Commitments

Why 5-steps and not 3 or 4? Well, just like when trying to pick something up with one-hand, the true strength comes in using all five fingers.

Here’s another way to think about it: I read an article by a pretty good bowler. He had three 300 games, many over 290, and a high three-game series of 790. He stated that a 5-step approach is used by most of the higher average bowlers. Here a summary of what that 5-step process looks like:

The first step is the speed step that sets up the entire shot. Step two is the push out where the bowling ball is set in motion from its starting position towards the lane where the bowler wants it to go. In step three the ball is allowed to fall into a natural swing motion. Step four continues the motion by ending the back swing and starting the ball back towards the lane. The final step is the slide and the all-important follow through.

Here’s how the five-step “STUCK” process compares to the technique used by high-achieving bowlers:

Set the Focus (like in bowling, this establishes where you are starting and where you want to go)
Talk about Options (this is where you push out the ideas to begin forward motion)
Unleash a Plan (now you frame a plan that feels both natural and achievable)
Check for Obstacles (like in bowling here’s where you make any adjustment needed)
Know Commitments (here’s where the all-important follow-through takes place)

When you read the 5-step process for bowling did you find yourself visualizing a bowler going through the process? Since it is more difficult to visualize the “STUCK” process, here’s a copy of the front and back of the laminated cards I provided to the counselors:

Next time you feel “STUCK”, give it a try.

Pam Smith - VP for Student Advancement, Biblical Seminary www.biblical.edu

Author of: Nine Ways Woman Sabotage Their Careers

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You Are Only as Great as the Questions You Ask

20 09 2012

Guest Post by Jorge Barba

Leaders lead through questions.

Farnam Street published a post about the art and science of asking better questions. The post includes some good tips on how about asking great questions, so be sure to check it out after you are done here.

Anyway, this got me thinking…

I like listening to interviews of any kind. Ever since I was a kid I like to watch and listen to the post-game interviews of sports events like the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl. Sometimes it is repetitive, but listening to these interviews helped me understand what makes a good interviewer. It also helps me understand how to ask and when to ask questions.

I also watched late shows like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan, etc. And also watch Charlie Rose every now and then. I like watching them because they are in the business of getting people to talk.

There are all kinds of questions. From sports, business, life, etc. And as a leader, having that arsenal in your head is very potent because…

If you want to lead, you need to re-frame

For innovators and leaders who want to unleash innovation inside their companies, developing the ability to ask great questions is imperative. To be able to re-frame a problem in a way that sparks different answers is a very valuable skill. And, it is probably one of the most difficult skills to master. Of course, for innovators it all starts with the known suspects: “why”, “why not” and “what if”.

But, there are more specific questions we can ask. And, even more profound ones.

For example, here are 46 Questions to help innovators know what customers want. These were taken from the table of contents from Tony Ulwick’s book What Customers Want:

Formulating Innovation Strategy
1. Who Is the Target of Value Creation and How Should It Be Achieved?
2. What Types of Innovation Are Possible?
3. What Growth Options Should Be Considered?
4. Where in the Value Chain Should We Focus to Maximize Value Creation?
5. How Do We Handle Multiple Constituents with Potentially Conflicting Outcomes?

Capture Customer Inputs
6. Why Should Companies Gather Customer Requirements?
7. What Three Issues Plague the Requirements-Gathering Process?
8. What Types of Data Do Companies Commonly Collect from Customers?
9. What Customer Inputs Are Needed to Master the Innovation Process?
10. What Methods Should Companies Use to Obtain the Necessary Information?
11. How Do You Know Which of the Three Types of Inputs You Should Capture?

Identifying Opportunities
12. What Is an Opportunity?
13. What Three Common Mistakes Are Made in Prioritizing Opportunities?
14. How Should Companies Prioritize Opportunities?
15. How Do You Identify Underserved and Overserved Markets?
16. How Dos Value Migrate Over Time?
17. What Implications Does the Outcome-Driven Paradigm Have for Competitive Analysis?

Segmenting the Market
18. What Is the Purpose of Segmentation?
19. How Has the Practice of Segmentation Evolved?
20. Why Are Traditional Segmentation Methods Ineffective for Purposes of Innovation?
21. What Is Different About Outcome-Based Segmentation?
22. How Is Outcome-Based Segmentation Performed?
23. How Does Outcome-Based Segmentation Address Development and Marketing Challenges?
24. How Is Job-Based Segmentation Different, and When Should it Be Used?

Targeting Opportunities for Growth
25. What Is Different About Targeting for Innovation?
26. What Types of Broad-Market Opportunities Are Likely to Be Attractive?
27. What Segment-Specific Targeting Strategies Are Effective?
28. How Does a Targeting Strategy Result in a Unique and Valued Competitive Position?
29. Why Do Companies Fail to Target Key Opportunities?

Positioning Current Products
30. Why Does Messaging Often Fail to Tout a Product’s True Value?
31. What Are the Prerequisites for an Effective Messaging Strategy?
32. What Messaging Will Be Most Effective?
33. Should a Company Message Along an Emotional or Functional Dimension?
34. How Does the Sales Force Have Immediate Impact on Revenue Generation?
35. What Is the Advantage of an Outcome-Based brand?

Prioritizing Projects in the Development Pipeline
36. What Issues Do Companies Face When Prioritizing Projects?
37. What Method Is Used to Identify the Winners and the Losers?
38. Which Efforts Should Get Top Priority?
39. What Other Factors Affect Project Prioritization?

Devising Breakthrough Concepts
40. Why Does Traditional Brainstorming Often Fail to Produce Breakthrough Ideas?
41. How Are Breakthrough Concepts Successfully Generated?
42. What Are the Mechanics Behind Focused Brainstorming?
43. Why Do Traditional Concept-Evaluation Methods Fail?
44. How Is the Customer Scorecard Used to Evaluate Product and Service Concepts?
45. How Are These Methods Applied in Practice?
46. What Is the Role of R&D in the Innovation Process?

More and better questions equal more and better solutions.

So, how can start asking great questions?

Here are three tips:

Identify and collect great questions. Questions are everywhere, and it is as simple as storing them in a notebook. You can find them on surveys, books, white papers and even on Quora. There is an endless source of supply.
Use a tool like the Reframing Matrix. Reframing is about shifting perspectives, this simple tool helps you do that in a visual way.
Use other people’s brains. If you have a diverse set of friends with different backgrounds and professions, use their brains. How would they see your problem from their point of view?

Jorge Barba @jorgebarba Innovation Insurgent who’s all about making change happen. Creativist. @disney Fanatic. Passionate about creating a smarter world. Chief Strategist @blumaya

http://www.game-changer.net

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3 Tips for Better Listening—and the One Attitude that Makes all the Difference

13 09 2012

Guest Post by David Witt

Good listening skills are essential to any manager’s success—but sometimes it’s hard to find the time in today’s frantic work environment. As a result, it’s easy to fall into a habit of listening to a direct report just long enough to offer advice or solve a problem.

This might keep the line moving, but it is not going to do much in meeting a person’s need to be heard.

Could your listening skills use a brush-up?

Here’s a three-step EAR Model designed to help managers slow down and focus on what people are sharing. The magic in this process is remembering to take the time to explore the issue raised by a direct report by asking clarifying questions, then acknowledging what is being said and the emotion behind it, before going on to the third step of responding.

Explore—ask open-ended questions such as “Can you tell me more about that?” and “How do you think that will go?” and “What does that really mean?”

Acknowledge—respond with comments such as “You must be feeling …” or “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is ….”

Respond—now that you have a good understanding of the direct report’s point of view, you can carefully move forward with a possible response.

Use this EAR Model to stop and take an extra minute to make sure you really understand the situation before responding.

You also need the right attitude

In addition to a good model, you also need the right attitude when it comes to listening. Otherwise, you end up going through the motions but not having anything truly penetrate the noise in your own head.

To combat that, quiet yourself and focus.

Now, listen in a special way. Listen with an expectation of learning something you didn’t know and possibly being influenced by what you find out. This is especially important if someone is sharing a new idea or feedback with you.

Remember to WAIT and ask yourself, “Why Am I Talking when I should be listening?”

Managers have to be open to being influenced and surprised by what they might hear. Sometimes it’s hard for managers to listen—especially if they have been doing the job for a long time—because they are sure that they already know what the direct report is going to say.

Remember: Listening means remaining silent. This will create a little space where you can explore and acknowledge before responding. Be sure to think about whether your thoughts are really needed, or whether a direct report just needs “air time” to process his or her thoughts. With a combination of the right attitude and the right skill set, you’ll still get to the answers, but you’ll do it in a way that allows you to make the best decisions and in a way that allows everyone to be heard.

David Witt is a business-focused writer, researcher, and speaker for The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can follow The Ken Blanchard Companies on Twitter @KenBlanchard or @LeaderChat and also via the HowWeLead.org and LeaderChat.org blogs.

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Curiosity Did Not Kill The Cat!

10 09 2012

Guest Post by Andy Uskavitch (originally posted to Linked2Leadership.com)

In order to help your employees grow you have to know about them. You have to know what they’re capable of – not only in your eyes, but in their eyes. You have to know what they enjoy doing – both at work and at home.

What do they consider a job well done?
If they were given time, what types of projects would they want to work on?
What resources do they need that you’re not aware of?

“Curiosity might be the most under-the-radar and undervalued leadership competency in business today.” This is just one of the thought-provoking and meaningful quotes from the new book, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want, by Beverly Kaye & Julie Winkle Giulioni (releases Sep 18).

Fairness is Not Fair

We always hear, from employees, about how things have to be fair. But everyone is NOT the same so you can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same schedule, raise, or attention.

The solution?

Be curious so you can determine just what is fair to each individual person.

Think about how “fairness” affects you and the organization.

Say you have one employee (A) that always has a positive attitude, has initiative, always exceeds expectations, and generally outperforms other employees (B). If you treat employee A and B exactly the same, with the same pay, raises, and perks, there will be no incentive for employee A to continue performing so well.

Is this being fair to employee A?

Being the Sincerity Role Model

You, of course, know that you’re a role model, right? Well you should. If you’re more curious, it’s going to trigger your employees to be more curious.

They too, will find out more about their own teammates and become more curious (ie, ask questions, plan) about how projects may pan out – fixing possible problems before they happen.

Don’t forget that your curiosity needs to be sincere.

Kaye and Giulioni go on to say this: “Quality questions asked without curiosity will signal to employees that you’ve just come back from training. Quality questions asked with the spirit of curiosity will facilitate conversations that will literally allow others to change their lives.” An a-ha moment, to be sure – one of many in their book.

How to Be Curious

Some basic questions you can ask, according to Margaret Heffernan in her Inc. Magazine article, Inspire Your Workforce: Be Curious:

Find out 10 things about your employees that you could not find on their resumes
Learn the names of each of their spouses or significant others
Find out how many pets belong to your workforce
See if you can find out one book each team member has recently read
Identify a favorite food (or drink) that each person likes

Ask these questions and you just may gain more enthusiasm and respect for your team. Heffernan said one CEO came away with far more creative ideas about how to motivate his employees, and by knowing what excited them, was able to connect better with them.

An effective environment is supported by high quality relationships between managers and their employees. Employees will work their hearts out only if they want to, and that’s determined mainly by the quality of the relationship with their managers.

A Curious Case in Point

Way back when, when I was working retail I worked with another manager that would always complain to me about one of our employees – we’ll call her Betty – no, Veronica. She’d tell me that Veronica was lazy, unmotivated, and disregarded her “power.”

On the other hand, I’d describe her as just the opposite. When we sat down one day to figure out why we described Veronica so differently, it quickly became obvious that it all had to do with our leadership styles. Where I asked Veronica about what work she liked and wanted to do, and about her family, and her future – my counterpart could have cared less.

I worked WITH Veronica’s strengths and worked ON her weaknesses. She was a model employee with me and a royal pain-in-the-arse with our other manager . . . all because I was curious. Wow, what a concept?

How is your relationship with your employees?
Are you curious enough about your employees to find out more about them? (you should be)
What can you do today to become more connected?

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Andy Uskavitch is a Certified Manager (CM) specializing in leadership/staff development and quality excellence programs at OneBlood, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL.

http://supervision-motivation.blogspot.com/

http://linked2leadership.com/author/andyuskavitch/

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Questions as the Ultimate Leadership Tool

3 09 2012

Excerpted with the permission of the author from Leading with Questions pages 22-23

Another example of a leader who makes effective use of questions is Commander D. Michael Abrashoff. Through what he calls “Grassroots Leadership,” Commander Abrashoff turned around the operations of the USS Benfold, one of the U.S. Navy’s most modern warships. His methods were not complex, yet the results were astounding.

Under Abrashoff’s twenty-month command, the Benfold operated on 75 percent of its allocated budget, returning $1.4 million to the Navy coffers. The promotion rate of his people was two and a half times the Navy average. The predeployment training cycle, which usually takes a total of fifty-two days, was completed by the Benfold crew in just nineteen days.

A third of all recruits don’t make it through their first term of enlistment, and only 54 percent of sailors stay in the Navy after their second duty tour. Commander Abrashoff had 100 percent of the Benfold’s career sailors signing on for another tour. It is estimated that this retention alone saved the Navy $1.6 million in 1998 (Crowley, 2004).

What did he do to stage such a turnaround in less than twenty months? As he himself remarks, he continuously:

Asked questions
Listened
Then he acted on what he heard

Almost immediately upon taking command, he had a fifteen to twenty minute personal interview with each of his staff of three hundred.

He asked each person these three questions:

What do you like best about this ship?
What do you like least?
What would you change if you could?

Abrashoff acted as quickly as he could to implement the ideas that came from these questions. He realized that simply following existing procedures and doing things the way they had always been done could no longer be effective.

Abrashoff set the vision and trusted his crew. He helped people take pride in their work.

Whenever I didn’t get the results I was looking for on the Benfold, I tried to look inward before flying off the handle. I also asked myself three questions each time:

Did I clearly articulate the goals I was trying to achieve?
& 3. Did I give people the time and resources they needed to succeed?

Eighty percent of the time, I found that I was part of the problem and that, through my actions alone, I could have altered the outcome significantly.

Abrashoff questioned every rule. He noted that when an officer or sailor came to him for approval or a signature on something, his first questions was always, “Why do we do it this way?”

If the answer was, “Because this is the way it’s always been done,” I would say, “That is not good enough. Find out if there is a better way to do this.”

After a while, people began doing their homework before they ever brought issues to me. And they could explain, “This is why we do things this way.” Or, “We’ve thought of a better way to get this accomplished.” It drove my officers crazy, but by creating a culture in which we questioned everything, we were training our people to keep their eyes open to new ways of doing business [Abrashoff, 2002].

Now three questions for you:

A. When you you going to ask yourself:

Did I clearly articulate the goals I was trying to achieve?
& 3. Did I give people the time and resources they needed to succeed?

B. When are you gong to ask your staff:

What do you like best about working here?
What do you like least?
What would you change if you could?

C. What are you going to do with the answers you receive?

Michael J. Marquardt is the President, World Institute for Action Learning and a Professor at George Washington University. Mike is the author of 20 books and over 100 professional articles in the fields of leadership, learning, globalization and organizational change including Action Learning for Developing Leaders and Organizations and Leading with Questions.

http://www.wial.org

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Find Your “WHY” to Improve Performance

30 08 2012

Guest Post by Sean Glaze

What is your motivation?

“WHY” do you lace up your shoes in the morning?

One of the things every great performer does to improve performance, regardless of their field, is find their “WHY.”

Imagine if I told you about a hidden suitcase, across town, that was filled with 800,000 dollars and I told where it was located, and that you could have the cash if you were able to get to the suitcase in the next three hours… would you find a way to get there?

Would traffic stop you?

Would you care about the weather or less important things on your schedule or other people wondering why you were so determined to get across town?

Would you waste time and complain about the obstacles along the way, or just get past them in order to reach the suitcase and get what was inside?

Now, imagine I told you the suitcase was full of “Monopoly money” instead.

Would that suitcase be your only priority and motivate you to overcome obstacles?

You see, the difference between the two suitcases, and what is likely your very different levels of motivation when considering going after them, is the why. When the “WHY” is big enough or important enough, the “HOW” normally becomes much easier to figure out.

But if the “WHY” in your life is just “Monopoly money” – if it isn’t really something you are passionate about – you will come up with excuses or busy yourself with distractions and be far less motivated to overcome obstacles in your path.

Some people are motivated by money – but that only lasts so long… Carrot and stick reward systems are the least effective of all motivators.

Some people are motivated by excitement or fear… they are either so excited about where they are going, or afraid to stay where they have been, that it becomes a powerful “WHY.”

But the most powerful “WHY” you can identify is loyalty to a person or cause that you love.

When you are motivated to do something for others, you rarely let anything get in the way of achieving your goal.

What is your “WHY?”

If you haven’t asked and answered that question, you will always be at a performance disadvantage when you face competition who has answered it.

Chris Paul was raised in North Carolina, and his grandfather had a large hand in raising him.

The day after Chris Paul signed his scholarship to play at Wake Forest, his grandfather was murdered at 61 years old… outside the gas station where Chris had grown up working with him.

For the next game his high school team played, he vowed to honor his grandfather by scoring 61 points… one point for each year of his life.

He had never scored more than 39 in an entire game before.

But Chris Paul scored 24 in the second quarter alone. He had scored 59 with 2 minutes left in fourth quarter – and after driving to basket and making the layup, he was fouled.

He missed the free throw on purpose and left the game with the 61 points he had pledged to score for his grandfather. His team won the game.

So how did he score so many points?

He had a “WHY!”

If your “WHY” is big enough your “HOW” becomes easy.

When you get tired, or frustrated, or begin to doubt… it is your “WHY” that will give you the energy you need to keep going. Your “WHY” won’t let you give up.

Galatians 6:9 says “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not lose heart.”

What is the “WHY” that will keep you focused and not allow you to lose heart?

Find your “WHY!”

As an experienced author, speaker, and team-building coach, Sean Glaze engages and influences audiences with a unique blend of dynamic content, interactive activities, and practical action steps. If you are interested in team development or need a team building speaker for an upcoming event, you can reach him at sean@greatresultsteambuilding.com.

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Five Great Reasons to Ask Questions

27 08 2012

Guest Post by Tony Stoltzfus

Have you ever left a conversation thinking, “Boy, that was one-sided. The whole conversation was about him.” My wife calls that “a lack of conversational generosity”. We all hate it when others can’t stop talking about their own thoughts and ideas—but we’re blind to how often we do it ourselves. The coaching approach forces your conversations to become less about your thoughts, your input, and how you can steer the dialogue around to the answer you think will work. You start listening—really listening—to the other person. You decrease what you say, so that they can increase. And that’s where the magic happens: the more you listen, the more you see how capable they are, how much they can do with a little encouragement, and what a wonderful individual they are. The more you ask, the more you love. To help you with this I listed five of my top reasons to adopt coaching questions in your conversations.

1. All the Information is with the Coachee
Nobody knows more about you than you. Since all the memories of it are stored in your head, you are the resident expert on your life. So if we’re, say, trying to improve your relationship with a co-worker, you can call up years of memories of working with that person, list what you’ve tried so far or what’s worked with others in the past, describe the organizational culture at work, etc. As the coach, you don’t know any of that (until you ask). So the coachee always knows far more about the situation than you do.

2. Asking Creates Buy-In
Coaching starts with the assumption that the key to change is not knowing what to do—its being motivated to do it. Research (and experience confirms) that people are more motivated to carry out their own ideas and solutions. What that means is that a less-optimal solution the coachee develops often produces better results than the “right” answer. Asking creates buy-in, and buy-in gets results.

3. Asking Empowers
I’ve made an interesting discovery as a coach. People often ask for coaching for a major decision. Probably 80% of the time, we realize that they already know what to do: they just don’t have the confidence to step out and do it. Self-confidence is a huge factor in change. When you ask people’s opinion and take it seriously, you are sending a powerful message: “You have great ideas. I believe in you. You can do this.” Just asking can empower people to do things they couldn’t do on their own.

4. Asking Develops Leadership Capacity
Leadership is the ability to take responsibility. A leader is someone who sees a problem, and says, “Hey—someone needs to do something about this! And I’m going to be that someone.” Simply asking, “What could you do about that?” moves people away from depending on you for answers, and toward taking leadership in the situation. Asking builds the responsibility muscle, and that develops leaders.

5. Asking Creates Authenticity
We all want to be known, and loved. There is no greater relational gift than to have someone see the real you and value you for it. The art of asking creates a bond between people, because simply by asking we honor and value them, and because taking the time to ask significant questions (and listen to the answers!) communicates that we really want to know them. The asking approach is the quickest way I know to build trust and transparency between people. And when we are talking about the things we really care about, we’re making changes that really transform us.

Tony Stoltzfus – Author, Leadership Coach, Master Coach Trainer

Twitter: @tonystoltzfus

http://www.coach22.com/

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