Coaching

How to Listen and Ask Questions

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

Keys to Coaching

Here are our main keys to leadership development and coaching:

• Your goal as a coach is to help others excel. Support, push, listen, and give specific info to be on their leading edge for success. Think of the combination between a sports coach and a counselor. Combine proactive planning with them with reactive listening and helping work through their own challenges.
• Michael Bungay Stanier says “Stay curious a little longer.” Wait to give advice as long as possible. 
• Ask the person to set clear action items before the end of coaching sessions and follow up next time. 
• Three things you can offer coachee: your own experiences, observations on words/actions, resources to support them. 
• Observe and provide feedback on coachee’s actions or written efforts. You need to see how people do in practice to give effective support and feedback.

Coaching Fundamentals

Overview

Your goal as a coach is to help others excel. Support, push, and give specific info to be on their leading edge for success. 

Think of the combination between a sports coach and a counselor. Coaching should leave room for both proactive setting of a direction/guidance with the coachee along with reactive listening and helping them work through their own challenges. It all depends on what the coachee needs at that time.

The Organizer’s Handbook writes, “coaching is about enabling others.” This means you are there to support another individual in clearly identifying the problem and supporting them as they grapple with ways to solve it. 

Oftentimes coaching is less about giving the right answer. It is about asking the right questions.

Michael Stanier in The Coaching Habit reminds us that “We can coach in 10 minutes or less.” You do not have to have an extended coaching session to get a lot done. You can do it as part of a regular one-on-one, when leaving feedback on a document/proposal/action plan, or after the completion of a meeting/action. 

Also, it is important to show you care about the person by listening and practicing good body language (i.e., SOLER: square, open, lean in, eye contact, and relax).

Principles of Effective Coaching

Michael Stanier in the The Coaching Habit, shares these key principles:

• “Tame your advice monster.” (i.e., see what advice a coachee gives themselves first).
• Support the coachee in identifying the “real” problem (i.e., sometimes the first thing a coachee will share is not actually what their main challenge is. They may need to be asked questions to realize a deeper issue to resolve).
• You can coach in multiple ways: in-person, on the phone, through written communication, etc. (e.g., leaving coaching questions in Google docs, via emailed proposals, etc.).
• Avoid giving your opinion in the form of a question (e.g., “Should you do X first?”).
• “AWE: And what else?” (i.e., a great question to ask after the coachee shares, or if you are not sure what to say next, is “and what  else?”).

Support Learning “On the Edge of Ability”

Daniel Coyle, in the Talent Code, writes that coaching is less about having all the right answers and information, “but rather in the supple ability to locate the sweet spot on the edge of each individual student’s ability, and to send the right signals to help the student reach toward the right goal, over and over.”

Constant and Immediate Feedback

Coyle further notes in the Talent Code, the importance of giving consistent feedback at all points throughout the process, rather than just at the end of sessions/activities. We learn best when we get feedback right after practicing and then ideally re-doing the activity if possible to solidify the learning. 

Accountability and Practice

Build the culture with your coachee that both of you will hold yourselves accountable to their success. That means they may need to practice over and over again the same skill, engage in independent study and observation, or create their own action plan. Your role is to ensure they set a strong goal/level of performance and meet it.

Provide Specifics 

It is helpful for coachees to hear specifics, rather than abstract ideas. Three things you can offer coachee:

• Your own experiences (e.g., when I was in this situation here’s what I did) 
• Observations (e.g., I noticed you got excited/hesitant when you started talking about X) 
• Resources (e.g., place to get more information, an individual/organization that may be useful, etc.)

Receiving Coaching Feedback 

In order to be an effective coachee, we need to make sure to be in a place to listen and digest feedback others are sharing with us. If we have a hard time receiving feedback in the moment, write it down and consider it later if it is something you feel is true for your situation.

Brené Brown notes in Dare to Lead, when people do not have good feedback skills, remind yourself, “There’s something valuable here, there’s something valuable here. Take what works and leave the rest.”

Scripts and Models

Marshall Ganz Coaching Model

The following material comes from Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Observe – “What do I see and hear?”

Coaching at its core, in this model, is all about asking specific probing questions to help both you and the individual understand the problem or issue. Never assume you know what the cause of the problem is until you eliminate other potential causes. This means you need to focus on listening, instead of jumping to your feedback/advice.

Diagnose – “Is it about effort, skill, or strategy?”

Ideally, you have done a great job listening and really understood more about the problem. That will make it easier to diagnose. Here are the three main causes of most problems facing individuals:

• Effort: Does the individual struggle because they are not putting in the time or energy to succeed? Does the individual feel frustrated or worried? Does the individual get tripped up by bad habits?
• Skill: Does the individual lack the information/skills necessary to be effective? Do they even know how to be effective? Have you roleplayed or modeled the skill? Have you sat down and written templates for them?
• Strategy: Does the individual struggle to accurately apply the information/skills they have access to? Do they spend way too much time on one area that other people besides the individual could do? Do they understand what is most worth the individual’s or group’s time, energy, and resources?

Intervene

Ideally, you want to help the coachee find their own solutions to the problem before offering your solution. But, if that truly is not an option because they do not have the experience or information, then you should support them. Here if you do give advice, you will want to avoid leading questions. If you have something to say it is better to just share it. 

Debrief

As with other meetings, now is the time to reflect on Plusses (areas going well), Deltas (areas to change), and key learnings (things you learned). This is also the time to write down tasks and due dates. 

Monitor and Celebrate

Along with tracking all tasks/due dates, it is best for all of you to keep track of the identified problems and how you are addressing them. At your next coaching session, refer back to these to see whether the individual/group has improved. Then make sure to celebrate success!

Potential Coaching Script

• Ask the coachee what they want to focus on today.
• Focus on asking questions and listening intently.
• Work to see if they can articulate the core issues/challenges they want to address, then ask questions if they have ideas on how to address.
• If they are unsure what to do, and you have asked in multiple ways, then consider offering coachee: your own experiences, observations on what they said, and resources to support them.
• Give the coachee time to write out their action item(s) + share it out loud.