10 Questions to Masterfully Coach in 10 Minutes

Keith Rosen, Master Certified Coach & Author of Sales Leadership

When supporting others professionally there are always baseline facts you need to know in every situation to ensure the coaching and advice you offer is relevant and valuable. You can uncover this information quickly, often with just one question.

Want to learn how to coach in 10 minutes or less? Let’s explore some questions that will easily guide you on a clear conversational path to co-creating outstanding results. But first, a bit of level-setting on coaching itself.

Resetting the intention of coaching.

Since most managers don’t know how to coach, they become part of the nonstop, problem-solving legion of frustrated “Chief Problem Solvers” who habitually do other’s work, create dependency, and nourish the seeds of mediocrity.

Here’s the unfortunate consequence. Once you solve someone else’s problem, even with your good intentions, you’ve adopted their problem and made it your own, relinquishing ownership rights and accountability from the person who brought this gift to you, which you kindly accepted. Consequently, their daily challenges become the gift your direct reports keep on giving.

Regardless of the coaching framework you use, every framework consists of well-crafted, precision-based questions to facilitate the conversation. These types of conversations empower people to self-reflect and arrive at a solution or new insight on their own.

Coaching is not an event with an on-and-off switch but who you are as a leader. Great leaders who are insatiably curious and caring lead every conversation with questions, rather than answers. With the right questions, the coachee creates the solution or solves their own problem. Now, it’s theirs so they have ownership of the outcome, not the coach. If the coachee created the solution, they’re more apt to act on it, rather than being told what to do.

Lead with questions, not answers.

In any conversation, the answers you get are only as good as the questions you ask. I have found a group of questions, which are part of my L.E.A.D.S. (Learn, Enroll, Assess, Define, Support) Coaching Framework, apply in practically every conversation. I’ve also provided some insight around the intention of certain questions, and why they must be asked.

These chronological questions are sure to make your coaching more efficient, effective, and intentional. They will give you a start and end point in every conversation, preventing you from floundering in the coaching abyss and derailing your coaching when searching to find the right questions to ask.

To read the complete article, 10 Questions to Masterfully Coach in 10 Minutes, visit Quotable.com.