Powerful questions in coaching

POWERFUL QUESTIONS

What will you have for dinner tomorrow?

You started reading this article, but now you are thinking a multitude of things – imagining where you will be, what’s in your fridge, who will cook the dinner? Perhaps you have been inspired to create a new dish or you are dreaming of take-away. This simple question interrupted your thought processes and transported you to the future. Questions have a powerful impact on our brains.

In this way, coaches can use powerful questions with their clients to change a thought pattern or belief, prompt insight, and shape future behaviour.

In coaching, what is a powerful question? According to Co-Active Coaching (1), powerful questions side-step waffle, confusion and excuses. They are designed to be provocative, inviting clarity, discovery and action. They are open-ended questions that are intended to provide opportunities for new perspectives and expanded learning.

Some examples of powerful questions include:

·?????What is possible?

·?????What if it works out exactly as you want it to?

·?????What is exciting to you about this?

·?????What is the opportunity here? What is the challenge?

·?????If you could do it over again, what would you do differently?

·?????What will you have to do to get the job done?

·?????What support do you need to accomplish it?

·?????What is your desired outcome?

·?????Where do you go from here?

As coaches, it is not our role to solve problems for the coachee. Instead, asking an insightful question helps the coachee to consider what they want to do. Once insight occurs, they can progress with clarity and commitment.

When asked a question, you ponder on the answer, and forget your other worries or habitual thoughts. Your brain, momentarily, wants to answer the question and focuses its resources on responding.

For coaches, it is important to take the time to develop a bank of powerful questions, and also be a present and active listener so that you can ask interrogative and challenging questions to you coachee. When you ask powerful questions, it shows you care about your client and their goals, and that you want them to grow.

As a researcher, I was curious to what evidence exists on the effects that questions have on the brain.

There is a fairly well-studied phenomenon in psychology known as the “question–behaviour effect” (2). This refers to the influence of questioning on subsequent performance of that behaviour. This is also known as the “mere-measurement” effect.

In 1993, social scientists Morwitz, Johnson, and Schmittlein (3) studied over 40,000 participants that showed that asking someone a scaled intention question on if and when they will buy their next car, increased their car purchase rates by 35% within the next 6 months.

In 1997, Spangenberg and colleagues (4) asked members of a health club members to predict how much they thought they would use the health club, and found increased attendance within the next 6 months.

However, a methodological review and meta-analysis (5) of the literature of the question-behaviour effect highlighted two sources of potential bias: a risk of bias in the studies, and evidence of publication bias. This suggested that the effect may be overestimated.

A more recent systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (6) showed a small but significant effect of the question-behaviour effect for health behaviours.

Both reviews highlighted a need for future trials to be conducted with lower risk of bias, with preregistered protocols and better blinding of participants.

?You may ask dozens of questions in a day, and not think about the consequences. Questions are a part of human communication, interaction and engagement. Research and lived experience has shown that powerful questions are an effective tool to promote reflection, big-picture thinking, facilitate ideas and strengthen relationships.

What power do questions really have to shape our future thoughts and behaviours? We may not know the precise answer, but asking good questions remains one of the most important roles of a coach.

References

(1) Co-Active Coaching (3rd ed.) ? 2011 by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House and Phillip Sandahl.

(2) Sprott DE, Spangenberg ER, Knuff DC, Devezer B. Self-prediction and patient health: influencing health-related behaviors through self-prophecy. Med Sci Monit. 2006 May;12(5):RA85-91. PMID: 16641888.

?(3) Morwitz, V. G., Johnson, E., & Schmittlein, D. (1993). Does measuring intent change behavior??Journal of Consumer Research, 20(1), 46–61.?https://doi.org/10.1086/209332

?(4) Spangenberg, E. Increasing Health Club Attendance Through Self-Prophecy.?Marketing Letters?8, 23–31 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007977025902

(5) Rodrigues AM, O'Brien N, French DP, Glidewell L, Sniehotta FF. The question-behavior effect: genuine effect or spurious phenomenon? A systematic review of randomized controlled trials with meta-analyses. Health Psychol. 2015 Jan;34(1):61-78. doi: 10.1037/hea0000104. Epub 2014 Aug 18. PMID: 25133835.

(6) Miles LE, Rodrigues AM, Sniehotta FF, French, DP. Asking questions changes health-related behavior: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Volume 123, 2020, Pages 59-68, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.03.014.