1 Coaching questions

Underpinning coaching, and great coaching especially, is the issue of asking useful, relevant, and sometimes intuitive questions. In later chapters we consider in more detail other core skills that make up the tool-kit, as it were, of the effective coach. But keep in mind that it is not the function of the coach to provide answers for the client – mentors¹ may do that – however, coaches enable the client to find the answers for themselves. In fact, the coach is always acting as a mirror to the client, reflecting back to the client what they have just said because:

1. In the pause between saying what the client says and the coach re-stating it – reflecting it – back to the client, the client’s own deeper mind, their subconscious mind, has more chance of kicking in and providing a new insight that had not occurred before;
2. And in the re-statement the perceptive coach has a chance to not only re-state what has been said but also to draw out its true significance. Re-statement is not always exactly the right term for what the coach is doing; paraphrasing would perhaps be more correct. The essence of paraphrase is summarising the essential aspects of what is said;
3. By reflecting the issue back to the source, the client is hearing it again, though with a slightly enhanced or nuanced emphasis (where the coach is being effective) and what this does is reinforce the client’s personal ownership of the issue. This increased ownership intensifies the desire to solve the problem² – it motivates.

People want to use a coach because they have an ‘issue’ or a ‘problem’; in a perfect world they would not need a coach since they would know what to do. But it mustn’t be thought that coaching is for ‘problem’ people; on the contrary, coaching is possibly the number one technique (alongside its cousin, mentoring) for enhancing just about anybody’s performance. Recent research in business indicates that coaching has dramatic effects on performance outcomes³ and this sort of effect is felt in all areas of coaching. Thus coaching, as has emerged over the last 20 years in the Western world, is a standard process that can help not only the performance of individuals and the productivity of organisations, but also anybody and everybody in facing the ‘issues’ they have in their private and personal lives. These range from improving health and fitness, raising the level of sporting achievements, coping with relationship, emotional and stress issues, and helping break addictive tendencies.

What, then, can we say coaching is? In the Introduction we cited Professor Nigel MacLennan’s powerful definition and its limitation. Expanding it, we derive our own view of coaching:

Clearly, as we explained in the Introduction, there are two purposes of coaching here: for performance and for development. Performance coaching is highly specific, whereas coaching for development, or what might better be called developmental coaching, is more general and of wider import. The former is more results driven, and the latter more process; the former is more about achievement within a role, and the latter more about actualising potential and bringing out latent capabilities. The former then, in one sense is easier; but the latter is more – to use a Lord of the Rings’ word ‘tricksy’, though deeply rewarding when done effectively, for both client and coach.

It is worth mentioning here the two continuums of coaching along which all of its skills ultimately derive.⁴ The perfect coach would be entirely balanced, but nobody is perfect and so we all have our predilections, or biases, that can give us greater strengths in some areas but less in others.

These continuums or elements are the fact that the coach, on the one hand, has to tread a fine line between supporting their client and challenging them (see Figure 1.1). If they become too supportive – too friendly as it were – they may fail to challenge them sufficiently. But if they challenge them too much without providing adequate support, like some oppressive parent or manager, they may set them up to fail because the challenge is too much. Like yin and yang, then, the coach has to have a balance between these two elements and find the right approach at the right time.

And, on the other hand, we also have the two related elements of empathy and objectivity (see Figure 1.2). It is important that we practise empathy in order to fully understand the client’s position; just understanding it in an intellectual way is invariably to misunderstand it. When we empathise we effectively ‘walk in their shoes’, so that we can feel the problem as well as cognitively recognising it. But the danger in feeling it as well is that we too get caught up in it and become unable to see the wood for the trees. The antidote to this is being objective; in other words, seeing the reality for what it really is. This is an important quality, but taken too far we treat the client as an accountant would treat the numbers in our business: routinely, matter-of-factly, and without any real regard for what is truly driving behaviours – our motivators in fact. This, too, can be fatal to successful coaching.

If we now combine these two elements into one graph (see Figure 1.3), we find there are four dominant options that present themselves.

These titles – Motivator, Goal-setter, Friend, and Observer – are four important ‘roles’ that the coach plays within the process of coaching. Each coach will be different, and with a different emphasis, but to coach at all effectively they will have to negotiate between all of these roles if they are to be effective; and they will need to be careful that none of the four roles becomes a chronic weakness which lets down the effectiveness of the other strong areas. Challenging without support is destined to fail; empathy without objectivity is bound to be blind; support without challenge is bound to underperform; and objectivity without empathy will lead to revulsion. Finally, it may well be that the great coach uses these four dimensions rather like a master pianist might use certain notes on a piano – depending on the audience (the client), certain elements might be more appropriate at any given moment in the client’s developmental cycle. In practice, as the client–coach relationship deepens, there is often a movement from being supportive and empathetic towards being more challenging and objective.

At this point it is good to introduce the relevance of all this to Motivational Maps⁵ and the nine motivators that drive human behaviour. The nine motivators are: Searcher (making a difference), Spirit (being free), Creator (wanting innovation), Expert (liking learning), Builder (wanting material rewards), Director (practising control), Star (wanting status), Friend (wanting to belong), and Defender (needing security). Each of these can be allocated into one of the four dimensions of coaching, except perhaps Expert, since learning can inform all four areas. With that in mind, then:

Four things at least to notice here:

1. First, the more Relationship type motivators – Friend, Star, and Defender – tend to occupy the more Supportive end of the spectrum, which seems entirely reasonable, given their preoccupation with other people.
2. Conversely, the more Growth oriented motivators – Creator, Spirit, and Searcher – tend to be more preoccupied with the challenges, because the challenge (and challenges are invariably about the future) will be perceived by them as making the biggest difference.
3. Third, this allocation is the ideal scenario and in certain (often many) situations one of the Map motivators may well occupy a different quadrant than shown in Figure 1.5. A good example might be the Director motivator. Ideally, given Director in their profile, we want coaches who are objective and supportive, but we can easily find them objective and challenging. However, too challenging combined with too much objectivity can be perceived as pushy and mechanical.
4. Finally, if you have done a Map and you know your top three motivators, do they tend to corroborate your own assessment of your quadrant strength from Activity 1.3? It is not a cause for concern if they do not; what you are trying to establish – from a variety of perspectives – is what your core strengths are as a coach and where maybe some more work and expertise needs to be developed. And – especially if Expert is your lowest motivator⁶! – one needs to doubly commit to improving the weaker element. Often very experienced coaches will have awareness of their natural default setting and over time will have developed their weaknesses to a point whereby, say, the naturally challenging and objective coach is also seen as friendly and supportive (this is an ideal scenario). What we want to help to develop are coaches with that awareness.

If we now consider the core skills that emerge from this overview of the elements of coaching, then it may become apparent that two skills in particular emerge as a result of reflecting on (empathy and support) and (challenge and objectivity).

It would be nice to think, as so many managers and businesses do, that setting goals is all that is necessary to achieve high performance levels. Goal-setting has a vital role to play and as we can see is one of the four dimensions. But, if we want to get the best from people – from our client, friends, and family members (including our children) – the first thing to do, long before setting a goal for them, is to build rapport. So the first core skill is building rapport,⁷ which addresses the empathy and support dimensions. Without rapport, the chances of being effective as a coach are extremely limited. The second core skill, addressing the challenge and objectivity elements, is questioning; and questioning here most emphatically includes the sub-skill, which can almost become a stand-alone and separate skill, of listening. As we will see, Motivational Maps has a lot to add to our understanding and our performance in these areas.

Typically, understanding how to build rapport with another person involves what might be called a combination of sub-skills and attitudes. However, one should be under no illusions: despite the proliferation of books⁸ promising to enable you to get on with anybody, anywhere, within ten minutes if you just follow their process, creating rapport with another person is not easy and is fraught with problems – it requires understanding of what influences rapport. Before introducing Motivational Maps as a targeted help in this arena, what usually counts towards building rapport?

In building rapport it is useful to think of a three-step process⁹: knowing you, liking you, and, finally, trusting you. This is as true in coaching as it is in sales for ultimately, we are all into selling our ability to influence others.

Knowing you

Start with the body: smile, introduce yourself and what you do, and then thank them for their time in speaking with you. That sets a scene for ‘knowing you’. Clearly, how you introduce yourself is critical: not only has one to avoid overloading people with ‘me’ statements and assertions designed to inflate one’s own importance but, more significantly, you need to be able to excite curiosity about you and what you do or enable them to see how talking to you will benefit them. The principles of physically meeting somebody so that one can say one ‘knows’ them are also true online: we create a persona online and this too needs to be welcoming, warm, and more about the client than the self.

Liking you

For the client, there are five ‘triggers’ that can encourage them to like you. (1) Physical attractiveness, or what has been called the halo effect.¹⁰ We impute other virtues – mental, emotional, moral – to people we perceive as attractive. Attractiveness, however, is not something ‘fixed’, or that we are simply born with (or not!). Hence the importance of clothes, grooming, and conscious image-management. (2) Similarity or likeness: we tend to like people more if we perceive they are like us. Some aspects of this – where we were born or educated – may be beyond our control, but things such as body language, voice tone, and dress are quite malleable. (3) People like us more when we compliment them; not crudely, and not flattery, but when we genuinely notice and express appreciation for some aspect of them, their possessions, achievements or qualities. (4) We increase our likeability when we are familiar to the other person. Familiarity occurs when they are exposed to us and our name more frequently – through repetition, through co-operation; and when we think about it, this is exactly how we form friends: by spending more time in their company. And, to extend this further, it may be because they have read about us, or seen our website or blogs, and so on. (5) We get to like others more if we can associate them with good experiences. This good experience may be physical (we play golf together), intellectual (you make me think in new ways), or emotional (I find you very supportive). But ultimately, we all prefer to be with people who give us good experiences, and these can be very simple things such as providing a good quality cup of coffee or tea when they visit you!

Trusting you

So, they know you, they like you, and critically to build true rapport they must trust you. All serious relationships are based on trust, and without trust no serious work or business (or relationship) can be carried out or function. The coach, then, must engender trust in the client. Trust builds over time; for everyone, until full trust is established, is always asking themselves, ‘Can I trust this person? Can I trust what they are saying to me? Is there some secret agenda?’

Trust comes about when we are consistent – we practise what we preach, we walk the talk, and we do what we say we are going to do on a repeated basis. Trust also comes about from first impressions: so, we return to how we appear and especially critical are our body language and eye contact. It is not a coincidence that in the English language we have words like ‘shifty’, which indicate somebody is not to be trusted. This is because people intuitively pick up on the fact that the body and the words are not consonant.

But finally, here, we come full circle, for the last and perhaps critical aspect of building trust – hence building rapport – leads directly on to our second core skill: questioning and listening. The listening component of the questioning skill is central to trust. Real listening is effectively an act of love.¹¹ Nearly everyone experiences the sense that nobody is listening to them or taking them seriously; we all want to demand attention – and as children we get some from our parents, but probably not enough; and then from friends and teachers, but invariably we wonder, ‘Is anyone really listening?’¹² Falling in love and having a partner is really that throw of the dice whereby we commit to someone – that special someone – who if nobody else does, is the one person who will listen to us. Of course, when that fails, it is extremely distressing and debilitating for the individual. They talk about ‘falling out of love’, but almost always, before they fell out of love, they were no longer listening.

Let us then examine some of the questions and listening skills that Maps help us develop. First, in Neuro Linguistic Programming (also see Chapter 4) – or NLP – there is a concept called pacing in which we need to match or mirror the behaviour (including their behaviour – or style – with language!) of the person we are seeking to influence. It’s important that we don’t attempt to do this mechanically, but from the heart; in a way when we ‘pace’ another person we are giving them more space to be themselves, as well as putting our own position in the best possible light in terms of their interpretation of it.

If we keep in mind this pacing concept, then there are three major, generic areas (apart from motivational specifics) in which the Maps can help us interpret what the client is thinking and feeling. These three areas are: attitude to risk and change, likely speed of decision making, and preferred learning style (see Figure 1.6). If we think about building rapport, it should be manifest that if we accommodate the client’s taste for risk/change, move at their speed in decision making, and talk to them in their learning style, our chances of building rapport are greatly enhanced.

In terms of what this means for building rapport, consider the following: your Motivational Map contains a RAG score¹³ and this indicates whether you – or your client – are dominantly Relationship, Achievement, or Growth oriented. In dealing with a client it is almost always easier to build rapport with someone whose Map profile is like one’s own as then you will naturally adopt the same sort of attitude to risk/change (RC), decision-making (DM), and learning style (LS) as the client. There will be, in short, a resonant sympathy. But, of course, in many instances the client will have a very different, even opposite profile, from yourself.

Hence, it is worth thinking through how one can adapt one’s own style to more suitably match that of the client’s.

If the client is R (Relationship) dominant in their motivators, then it is important to:

If the client is A (Achievement) dominant in their motivators, then it is important to:

If the client is G (Growth) dominant in their motivators, then it is important to:

Keep in mind that some individuals may be so closely scored in their RAG that one will have to adapt aspects of more than one preference. Also, keep in mind, that individuals who are closely scored (a range of no more than 4 points from the top to the bottom) may well experience tension and indecisiveness in deciding what they want since their motivators are conflicting.

Once we have built rapport, we need to ask good questions and listen carefully to the responses in order to help the client. What are good questions to ask the client?

Typically, coaching has its own set of questions that can be asked. Different schools of coaching have different emphases here. Michael Bungay Stanier¹⁴ in his excellent book, The Coaching Habit, lists seven questions that, he claims, can unpack most issues from most people. These are highly effective and well explained but at an even profounder level are the ‘change talk’ questions used by Miller and Rollnick in their classic book, Motivational Interviewing.¹⁵ Here we have a process which involves presenting the client with subtle questions surrounding four key issues: the disadvantages of the status quo, the advantages of change, creating optimism for change, and enabling an intention to change.¹⁶ So, on the one hand, then, we have seven simple questions and we can immediately get stuck in, as it were; whereas, on the other, we have an in-depth psychological approach based on very serious and detailed research, but that requires a large commitment of time and training to acquire. Both have advantages and downsides, and no one approach can be considered definitive. Why? Because we are dealing with people. Indeed, as both approaches recognise,¹⁷ it is not enough to have a checklist of questions that are asked mechanically; the effective coach has to respond to client answers and veer a course appropriately. And that course may not be in the direction that they (the client and/or the coach) originally anticipated.

How, then, does doing a Motivational Map help with the coaching process of asking the client questions? First, the advantage of doing the Map is that the initial conversation can focus on it and not immediately on the issues of the client. This is important because it takes away the client’s potential apprehension and it directs attention towards the objective ‘thing’ that they have completed – the Map. Whether or not the results of the Map have been released in advance to the client, once the profile has been fed back, a series of questions become inevitable, and relatively easier to answer.

Asked casually, the first question might be: How did you find the Map? Notice how general and non-committal this is. It appears to be a ‘thinking’ question, but whenever you ask someone how they find something we are really inviting them to talk about how they feel. You can’t be ‘wrong’ in how you find something because it’s how you feel about it. In the course of the client’s answers about how they ‘found’ it any number of issues can surface. For example, to the bland response, ‘Interesting’, the follow-up sub-question must be, ‘How so?’ or ‘In what way?’ Most responses, however, are not bland, but more ‘a-ha’.

Second, you ask, How accurate is the Map? Notice here too that we are not saying that the Map is accurate, but that the client be the judge of its accuracy. But from the coaching perspective this is vital – for either way, accurate or not, it enables the coach to assess where the client is emotionally and energetically. Most people – that is, some 95 per cent¹⁸ of them – find the Map extremely accurate. That confirmation is vital information on which to go to work. Remember: if it is accurate (and if it is not, then they will explain why it is not, thus revealing more about themselves), then you have a detailed emotional and energetic snapshot of where they currently are, and based on only two questions! And why is this important? Because if we know the emotional and energetic state of the client we can be highly sensitive to likely issues and challenges that arise from it; furthermore, we can begin that process of diagnosis and prescription long before we have even finished our examination of their ‘condition’. Any example would do here, but, say, they confirm that Searcher, the desire to make a difference, is indeed their number one motivator and that their satisfaction rating is only 4 out 10. We will therefore know that whatever role they are performing, is either intrinsically meaningless to them, or simply too routine, and that to help them, we as coaches, are going to need to direct them to ways of increasing meaning and of acquiring more quality feedback.

Finally, at this stage, we ask: What did you learn about yourself? Notice that this allows the client to share any insights they gleaned from the Map profile. Of course, ‘Nothing’ is not an answer one wants to hear, but if one does hear it, the best sub-question response probably is: ‘So what is the most important thing in the Map profile for you?’ We do find people who like (fondly) to imagine that they already know everything about themselves that there is to know, but we have yet to find anybody who does not answer that last question, for there is always something that absorbs their attention in the profile. Why? Because it is about them.

But where are we, then, after these three (sub-questions included) questions? The three core questions are summarised in Figure 1.7:

In asking these three questions we have established:

1. How they feel – how they ‘found’ (out) – about themselves because the Map is a mirror of themselves. It is an ipsative test, which means they are literally comparing their self with their self.¹⁹
2. How they think – accuracy requires thought – about what they feel about themselves!
3. What they know – learning requires reflecting (thought) on feeling, leading to knowing at a confirmatory level where we know this to be the case with a deeper level of commitment.

In short, these three Map-specific questions have established levels of self-awareness and information at the three primary modes of human perception: Feel–Think–Know.²⁰ This is profoundly rapport building in and of itself. Furthermore, we have gained an insight, as coaches, as to where the client is emotionally and energetically. This is important and precedes goal-setting. For what, truly, is the point in helping people set ambitious goals for themselves when they are either not emotionally clear on what they want, or are in a state of low motivation, or both things simultaneously?

And we know something else too. We know, again as coaches, even if the client is not clear on what he or she wants, we are! Because we know from their Map what they subconsciously desire; that is, the secret questions – the real filters – that they are applying to every idea and proposal and question we put to them. And this is not just with us. In every situation, but especially work, they are asking three key subconscious questions that are correlated with their top three motivators (see Figure 1.8).

If we take the above questions and consider them from the point of view of building rapport, or even more fundamentally as to whether a client wants or accepts a coach (keep in mind that some people select coaches and others have them foisted on them as part of a programme) or not, then the issues in Figure 1.9 would need addressing:

Again, keep in mind most individuals will have three of these nine questions jostling in their subconscious, yet they will be in a strict hierarchical order as indicated by the Motivational Map; therefore, the top motivator should be the primary focus. For example, if the top three motivators were Creator, Spirit, and Searcher – in that order – then we can see in Figure 1.10 the hierarchy of the subconscious questions from Creator to Spirit and lastly to Searcher.

It should be clear that this model of coaching doesn’t start with what the client’s goals might be or what is on their mind. This may be a useful starting point, but it also may lead too quickly into a logical, ‘think’ type analysis that proves to be premature. No, by considering the motivators and the client’s response to them we are immediately thrown into how the client feels as the starting point, and from that there is an increase in their emotional and energetic self-awareness. This is important because it is setting up the client to be emotionally aligned with the actions and goals they are subsequently going to choose; this means there is far more chance that they will invest heavily in doing and achieving them.

What we now want to do in this opening, exploratory stage of the coaching investigation into the client’s condition is to further probe how the motivators and the current role match, or not. Of course, we already know partially from the Personal Motivational Audit (PMA) scores how they feel about role satisfaction (see Figure 1.11 for how the numbers are laid out on page 13 of the Motivational Map).²¹

As we can see in Figure 1.11, this particular person has three top motivators – Spirit, Builder and Expert, and in that rank order. We also see that this client is 5/10 satisfied with his current levels of autonomy (Spirit), 8/10 for his levels of money (Builder), but 10/10 for his sense of expertise (Expert). Overall, based on the three PMA scores and the proprietary algorithm used by Motivational Maps, this person is 64 per cent motivated.

Here are some questions to open up the client further.

1. What would be different if you were more motivated in your current role?
2. How important is motivation to you? Out of 10?
3. How can you get more motivated/sustain your motivation at this 10 level?
4. How – exactly – does your current role fulfil your top three motivators? And how does it not fulfil your motivators? What can be changed?
5. What ‘rewards’ would improve your motivations?
6. What would an increase in motivation do for your performance and productivity in your current role?
7. How can I help you become more motivated?

These questions do not need to be all answered by the client, or necessarily dealt with sequentially. But they are all prompts to a deeper understanding of where the client currently ‘is’. And, of course, let us not forget as we end this chapter that these questions can also be used to self-coach. Try them!

Summary

1. Coaches reflect back poignant statements that clients make to help them become aware of what is occurring subconsciously.
2. Coaching is a mix of empathy and objectivity, challenge and support; the greater the rapport the greater your ability to challenge effectively.
3. Building rapport is the first core skill of effective coaching and mirroring is an effective way of building rapport quickly.
4. For a client to become a coaching client they go through a process of knowing, liking and then trusting you.
5. Knowledge and understanding of the Motivational Map can drastically enhance your ability to build rapport, especially its depiction of risk and change, speed of decision-making and learning style.
6. Using a Map as a starting point for coaching conversations provides a simple, easily acceptable and non-threatening way of opening up a coaching conversation or opportunity.
7. Through understanding the client’s Map in advance of the meeting you are aware of their subconscious motivational desires!
8. When choosing a coach, the client’s motivational drivers play a significant part in their decision-making process.
9. By understanding our client’s Map we can have a much greater influence and create action plans which both work for the client and in which they are more greatly invested.