Questioning and listening are essential skills for any business coach who wants to help their clients achieve learning and change. In this article, you will learn how to use different types of questions and listening techniques to facilitate effective coaching conversations that lead to meaningful outcomes.
Questions are an essential tool for coaches to stimulate thinking, explore possibilities, challenge assumptions, and elicit feedback. They can also help build rapport, trust, and empathy with clients. However, when selecting questions to ask, it is important to choose the right type depending on the coaching goal and situation. Open-ended questions invite clients to share their thoughts without limiting their responses. For example, "What are your goals for this project?" or "How do you feel about this situation?". Closed-ended questions require a yes or no answer or a specific piece of information, such as "Did you finish the report?" or "What is your deadline?". Probing questions dig deeper into responses and help to clarify, elaborate, or justify statements. An example of this type of question is "What makes you say that?" or "How did you come to that conclusion?". Scaling questions ask clients to rate something on a scale from 1 to 10 and measure progress, identify gaps, and set goals. An example of this type of question is "On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you in your ability to handle this task?" or "On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with the results so far?".
A counter-intuitive and highly effective approach to asking the right questions is to stop thinking about what to ask, mute the mental noise, turn up the volume on what the client is communicating and observe what you're curious about. Pairing your curiosity coming from deep listening, with seeking the client's permission can often create moments of awareness for the client about what's going on in their internal landscape. Eg "I noticed you sighed deeply & your shoulders slumped as you said that.... would that be something you would want to explore?" A client might say yes, and you can follow it up with "What might your body be communicating to you with that?" If they say no, you can ask "What would be useful to explore at this point?"
Listening is more than just hearing what your clients say; it is a way of showing respect, interest, and curiosity for them. It is also a way of validating their experiences, acknowledging their feelings, and supporting their learning. However, listening is not always easy and requires concentration, patience, and awareness. To improve your listening skills, you can practice active listening, empathic listening, and appreciative listening. Active listening involves giving your full attention to your clients and using verbal and non-verbal cues to demonstrate your engagement. Empathic listening involves understanding their perspectives, feelings, and needs and expressing empathy in a genuine and respectful way. Appreciative listening focuses on the positive aspects of your clients' stories and highlights their strengths, achievements, and potentials. By practicing these techniques, you can show respect for your clients while validating their experiences and supporting their learning.
Oscar Trimboli shares simple ways to deepen listening. - be comfortable with silence; often in pauses, the speaker is simply gathering their thoughts - 'say more' allows the speaker to go deeper into what's true for them and explore it fully - 'what else' gets the speaker thinking laterally, and adjacencies in their thinking emerge. Holding that quiet space requires shifting the focus from a 'performative self-lens' (I'm the coach, I'm supposed to help, what should I ask next) to a 'generative other-lens' (the client is resourceful and is capable of finding what they're seeking, my role is simply to support them in exploring their own thinking fully).
Questioning and listening are complementary skills that need to be balanced in a coaching conversation. If you ask too many questions, you may overwhelm, confuse, or intimidate your clients, and if you listen too much, you may lose direction, focus, or momentum. To find the right balance, consider the purpose of the conversation, the style of the client, and the feedback from the client. Depending on these factors, you may need to ask more open-ended or probing questions and use more empathic or appreciative listening in the beginning of a coaching relationship; ask more scaling questions and use more challenging and constructive listening in the middle; or ask more closed-ended questions and use more active or appreciative listening in the end. Questioning and listening are powerful tools that can help create meaningful conversations with your clients, enabling them to achieve their learning and change goals.