Learn to ask the right Coaching Questions!

As a coach you have a responsibility to your clients to get to the bottom of their problems, aspirations and goals. To find out what these are you will need to ask the right coaching questions.

At the start of every coaching session there are sets of questions that you as a coach need to ask your clients. These questions are those that will give us the answers we need to be able to guide them and help them achieve what they have come to us for. We need to ask coaching questions to get to the bottom of their problems, know their needs and to have a background of their lives. We need to ask to get answers.

 To get the right answers we must ask the right coaching questions. These questions are those that your clients have a hard time expressing but are questions they secretly want to answer. So what are these questions? To discover the right questions, one must first ask a broad set of questions. These questions sometimes are open ended which allow me to collect varied information about my clients. Some information may be important and some may not, but it allows my client to share everything about himself which show me what items are important to them. When a client is able to open up about details about himself that are most sensitive and share you his beliefs then they will be able to reflect on what they have shared and tell you what they want and what is most important to them.

So as a coach you will have to learn to know what coaching questions to ask. Without the right questions, information that may be valuable to you may just be locked up in your client’s thoughts that may never surface. The best way to learn to ask the right questions is to practice. Practice asking questions and of course practice listening. Listening may lead to other questions that may be vital to you and your client. Also practice observing. Observe your clients’ reactions to your questions. Observe his gestures, his facial expressions as this may mean a lot of things. This may also help you in understanding your client more. There are times that a client may have a hard time expressing himself but his actions may say a whole lot. So let us remember that in our quest to know more about our clients and to help them achieve their goals, the key is to ask the right coaching questions.