Questing in Coaching

The therapist Carl Rogers differentiated questing from questioning. Being questioned can feel intrusive and controlling, while questing implies exploring something together. When you go on a quest you are going on an adventure of discovery, you are exploring new territory and making a map as you go in order to understand it better. The new territory you are exploring is the experience, the feelings and the meaning-making of the teacher you are coaching, and you are going on this quest together with the teacher. Questions can be a part of the quest, they are a way that you explore the territory, along with careful and empathetic listening.

In coaching, the careful use of questions is a challenging skill to develop. It is a skill that builds on and relies on you having already actively worked to develop your skills in listening and empathy. Questing is about asking questions that are helping you and the person you are coaching understand their inner landscape. They help the two of you fill in blank or unclear parts on your shared map of their experience.

To engage together in this quest you need questions that are open-ended, clarifying, or empathetic. We can think of these as “real” or “genuine” questions that you as the coach don’t know the answer to or have the answer for. We can also think of these as “neutral” questions in that you are careful not to include the judgments or solutions that you might have in your mind. For example, “Why didn’t you just…” is a judgment about what someone should have done but phrased as a question.

The easiest way to form questing style questions is to check with yourself whether they are real, genuine, and neutral? Are they helping you fill out the map of the other person’s experience? Are they necessary? Will they support growth?

QUESTing questions are:

Open

Open questions are questions that do not have a "yes" or "no" answer. A coach uses open questions to clarify his or her understanding of what the teacher is feeling.

Open questions:

• may begin with how, what or who

• usually have an answer other than 'yes' or 'no'

• may be used to gain information (what happened then?); explore thoughts, feelings, attitudes and opinions (what did you think when that happened?); or to check for the unspoken, feeling part of the story (how did you feel when. ..?, or Were you feeling frustrated by...?)

When thinking about asking a teacher a question, first ask yourself whether the question is necessary.

A basic rule here is to ask a question only if you feel it will:

• clarify your understanding

• help the speaker to explore their own process

Open questions, if used respectfully, will help build a trusting relationship where the speaker feels safe to explore what is going on for them.

Be very careful with any 'why' questions, a why question can feel very judgmental even if it’s not intended to.

Instead of 'why' try replacing it with 'what'. So instead of saying, 'Why did you do that?', ask, 'What made you do that?'

This can help make the conversation flow better, and you and the teacher may find out new information and quest together into a new area of the map of their experience.

NOT closed

Closed questions are questions are likely to be answered "yes" or "no" answers.

For example:

"Do you feel sad?" No.

"Do you feel happy?" No.

For example:

Coach: "Ok. Are you ready for us to start?"

Teacher: "Yes."

Clarifying

Clarifying questions are open questions used by the coach to make sure they fully understand what the client means. Clarification is used so that the coach does not misunderstand the teacher’s perspective. When a clarifying question is asked, the teacher has the opportunity to either correct the coach or reinforce that the coach does understand. Understanding the teacher’s perspective is an important part of engaging them with empathy and building a coaching relationship.

EXAMPLE:

In the midst of a coaching conversation the teacher is describing an incident with a student.

Coach: “let me check that I’m understanding. You were expecting that the student would be comfortable being put in the small group that you put her in, but she didn’t seem to be engaging with the other students?”

Teacher: Yes. And that’s why I wanted to check and see if things were okay.

The coach explains what they think they are understanding of the teacher’s experience, and the teacher has a chanc to confirm or correct the coach’s understanding.

Empathic

Have you ever had the experience of being asked one question after another? It can feel like you are being interrogated, rather than listened to. Someone who is skilled in the ‘art of listening’ will use open questions sparingly, to help clarify what the client has said so that they can reflect and paraphrase it more accurately. If we ask the right question, the teacher is suddenly going to see this new opportunity to grow or recognize a new meaning in an experience. But this is not our journey; it’s the teacher’s journey. It’s for them to find the new opportunity or new meanings, and it might not be the same one that we see.

This is why our questions are grounded in empathy. The coach makes sure that they only use questions to clarify understanding, not questions that are intrusive, or that re-direct the teacher’s thinking to our own goals or agenda. Sometimes a period of silence may be needed while the teacher is thinking.

Active Listening as a form of Questing

Active listening is the kind of listening approach that Carl Rogers recommended as a way of staying with the experience of the other. In active listening, questions are used to explore the other person's experience. Active Listening has been a popular skill set to teach parents, teachers and school counselors for some time. Take a look at the video below and think about how the ideas above show up in this video clip: