Coaching conversations

The desired outcome of coaching, in my view, is that the person being coached is thinking more effectively, understanding their context fully, and making realistic choices. This may lead to necessary changes in behaviour. As far as possible, the coach uses conversations to lead to these results. These conversations can be helped by some key questions. Here are some examples.

1. Helping people to make sense of their context in which they work, so that they can manage their behaviour accordingly.

This may involve
• helping the person to think more widely about the organisation - for example
o “What works around here?”
o “Who should you be talking to?”
o “Who has the real power in this area?”
o “Where does this project fit into the strategic plan?”

• identifying problems and possible causes - for example
o “What exactly is going wrong?”
o “Has this happened before?”

• conversations about desired outcomes, for example
o “What’s your general purpose here?”
o “If things were really going well, what would you see happening?”
o “What difference are you trying to make? How would you know it was working?”

2. Other conversation is related to performance. Thus a coach may usefully discuss:-

• what a person is doing
o “What exactly did you do?”
o “How are you going about this?”
• comparisons
o “How does this compare with what you did last time?”
o “How is that different from what others are doing?”
• observations
o “I notice that you….”
• thinking approaches
o “How are you thinking this through?”
o “What evidence are you looking for?”
o “What assumptions are you making?”
• use of resources
o “Ideally, what resources would help?’
o “Could you organise the resources in a different way?”