Why? Don't be lazy!

When it comes to questions, few are potentially more powerful than "Why." Yet, I rarely use it. It is a lazy question.

It's easy to ask "Why?", but also lazy. The answer to "Why?" is often as rote as the answer to "How are you?" Both questions produce immediate, simplistic responses. And not much reflection.

Instead, rephrase "Why?" into a question that will cause deep reflection and generate multiple responses.

Read the whole article here, and comment below.

Questions to Coach Meaning

Meaning is all around us: living out calling, relationships, learning goals, spirituality, etc. Unfortunately, all of life is not focused on meaningful pursuits.

Life is full of routine. Routine is comforting, but also can become numbing, even to the point of replacing meaning.

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The Answer is the Question

Are you looking for answers?

We often look for answers in the form of information - books, advice, teaching, etc. However, we make a mistake if we confuse information gathering with learning.

The University of California, San Diego did a study of how much information the average American takes in a day. It's 100,500 words or 34 gigabytes of data - a day! That's like filling your computer's hard drive every two days.

But information does not wisdom make.

Read the whole article here. And use the "comment" link below to give your thoughts.

Questions for Decision-Making

It's said that 90% of decision-making is based on emotions. I see most decision-making as a product of our underlying motivations: we want something, or we want to avoid something.

Motivations based on social status, security, or pleasure lurk under the surface of the decision-making process. By drawing out motivations you can help people to make better decisions.

Read the whole article here, and comment below.

Planning With Vision, Foresight & Faith

The reality is we all need to plan ahead. And planning takes vision, foresight, and faith.

We need vision to know what we should be accomplishing.

We need foresight to predict the conditions that will effect our work.

We need faith to push us past our predictions and give us hope in fulfilling our vision.

Here's some questions I use in planning: [read more]

Comment below.

Exploring Values

Everyone structures and navigates life according to his or her own internal "numbering system": the values, beliefs, and experiences that shape how we view the world.

You can assist people to powerful new awareness by helping them examine these, and helping them discover how these things are influencing their situation.

Read the whole article here. And comment below.

The Power of "In Here" Coaching

Change is essential in life. Growth is change, so is decline. There's no avoiding change.

We all want change, but we want others to do the changing or at least change first! It reminds me of Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark: "Asps, very dangerous - you go first." Without knowing it, we can expend a great deal of energy avoiding change.

Goals and problems can be approached from many different directions. Some approaches seek to change things "out there" and some to seek to change things "in here," that is, inside the client.

Read the whole article here, then come back and leave a comment.

Questions to Find Your "Fit"

People want to find where they "fit" in terms of their work, their role, and living out of their true self. For some, they want to change roles, jobs, or organizations. This article will show you how to coach someone to find and evaluate a suitable role or position.

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The Second Question to Ask in Planning

The first questions to ask was "why", that was last month's article. The second question to ask is "who."

"Who" is about the people involved. "Who" tells you the context of the plan. Context includes who is involved. What are their needs. What are their values. What are their goals, objectives, and desires. Only by knowing these things can you begin to answer the question "why?"

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What's the First Planning Question to Ask?

You have a good idea. To take it to implementation you must first think through various questions. You might ask:

Who?
What?
When?
Why?
How?

Which of these questions should you ask first? Careful now, all questions are not created equal. Your choice could dictate whether your idea is a smashing success or just a smash!

Read the whole article here.

Questioning Knowledge

Knowledge is overrated.

I used to think that if I knew the right things, I'd be set. After all, knowledge provides answers to solve problems, right?

We live in a knowledge economy where we live off what we know instead of what we physically produce. The Internet has made that information widely available to millions of people, most of whom are hungrier and more clever than myself. Living off of knowledge is getting tougher and tougher.

Read the full article here, and then leave your comments below.

New Book: Coaching Questions

The single most important skill in coaching is asking powerful questions. An incisive question posed at just the right moment can be a life-changing experience.

In this volume, master coach trainer Tony Stoltzfus joins with 12 other professional coaches (including me, Keith Webb) to present dozens of valuable asking tools, models and exercises, and illustrates them with over 1,000 examples of penetrating coaching questions. Covering the gamut from basic techniques like options and actions to advanced concepts such as challenge and reframing, Coaching Questions is a book that will find a home on any coach's short list of handy references.

Instead of just offering lists of questions, this book connects the question examples with the coaching tool they are used with and their place in the coaching conversation, and teaches you to use the tools as well. The focus on tools plus examples makes it a reference guide you'll return to again and again.

You can purchase this directly from Tony.

What do you think of this book? Leave a comment.

Self-Evaluation Questions

Rather than give feedback, ask your client to self-evaluate.

What did you do well?

What, if anything, would you like to improve?

How would you do that differently next time?