What makes an impactful question?

In their early training, coaches are taught a number of questions that have the potential to help clients to think. In practice, these rapidly lose their impact because:

  • The client has already encountered them before, in other contexts, so they lose the surprise factor.
  • They encourage “lazy questioning,” where the coach automatically falls back on faithful stand-bys.
  • They encourage “lazy answering” because the client has developed a formulaic response (which they are often unaware of).

A question is only powerful or impactful if it causes the client to step outside of their normal narrative or self-discourse.

From the analysis of hundreds of questions in my collection, developed in large part from observing around 1,000 coaches in action, we can identify the core characteristics of an impactful question. These are:

  • Personal: the client feels that this question is specifically crafted or chosen for them and the situation they are in. (Example: In what ways is this your responsibility alone?)
  • Resonant: in addition to any rational perspective, it carries a substantial emotional essence. (Example: How do you reward yourself?)
  • Acute and Incisive: it gets right to the point. (Example: What would it be like to care just enough?)
  • Reverberant: It’s not easy to answer once and for all. Any initial response is just a first take, subject to further reflection hours, months, or even years later. (Example: What is the contribution you want to make to the world?)
  • Innocent: it has none of your agendas – overt or hidden – within it. (Example: What is the question you are avoiding asking yourself about this?)
  • Explicit: it is very simply expressed, as opposed to long and convoluted. (Example: What can you forgive yourself for?)

A consistent observation is that the more the coach focuses on “managing” the coaching conversation, the fewer really impactful questions they ask!

Recommended good practice is to build your portfolio of powerful questions. When a question works, record it and store it against another occasion when you instinctively feel its time has come around again.

Five motives for questions

Our analyses show five question styles, based upon the reason for asking them. These are:

  • Questions to demonstrate superiority. (Examples are: Who do you think you are? You don’t think that’s going to work, do you?)
  • Questions for information sharing – swapping data with someone else. (Example: So what’s different about working in this industry?)
  • Questions for self-curiosity – i.e., information you are interested in for your own purposes and in relation to how you make sense of the world. (Example: How does that work then?)
  • Questions for other-curiosity – how the other person makes sense of the world. (Example: What values drive how you approach these decisions?)
  • Questions that lead to better questions. This is about recognizing that impactful questions are stimulated by great questions, which derive from good questions, which derive from (you get the picture!). (No example here: it is the gradual emergence that is key!)

Should you use why questions?

Standard textbooks say no, because “why” can put people on the defensive, and because what, where, who, when, which, and how tend to lead to more open responses. Experienced coaches often say yes, sparingly and in context, because defensiveness can’t be dealt with unless it is brought out into the open. The more comfortable you feel about challenging your clients, the more useful why can be. Just don’t overuse it and always consider first other ways of expressing the same thing – so What causes you to…? rather than Why do you?

Peter Senge advocates five whys – each probing a little deeper into the client’s reasoning and rationalizations. Another way to make questions more challenging is to ask the same question multiple times, with different emphases. Here’s an example, sticking with Why:

  • Why do you care? (no emphasis)
  • Why do you care?
  • Why do you care?
  • Why do you care?

Four perspectives of questioning

Observation of dozens of coaches and mentors a couple of decades ago found that they were constantly shifting perspective. If someone is viewing an issue only from the perspective of their immediate response, they are unlikely to achieve any significant insights until they shift perspective. These shifts can be described on two spectra – rational to emotional; and stepping in (seeing things from your own perspective) to stepping out (seeing things from the perspective of other people).

When a coach realizes the client is stuck in one perspective, they first explore that perspective, using questions like those below, then help them gradually move into another perspective.

Examples of questions in each perspective:

Stepping in / emotional

  • How do you feel?
  • What values are you applying?
  • Did that make you uncomfortable?
  • What would that mean for you?

Stepping in / rational

  • What (really) happened?
  • What do you want to achieve?
  • What’s the impact on your job?
  • What choices do you have?

Stepping out / emotional

  • How do you think the other person felt?
  • How might your colleague feel if you handled it this way?
  • What could you do to reduce their fears?

Stepping out / rational

  • Can you look at it from another perspective?
  • How would you advise someone else?
  • What prevents you?
  • What outcome do you think they would want?

Sometimes the coach also uses bridging questions, such as How do you want to feel about this?

You can also shift perspective by using questions that address the client’s mood. Laughter and smiling have a strong, positive effect on the creativity of thinking. So, questions such as What’s the most ridiculous part of this situation? can redirect their mental energy along more beneficial paths.

With questions, less is more

Observing highly effective and less effective coaches reveals that the former ask far fewer questions than the latter, but the impact of the questions they do ask is much greater. Two practical techniques can help develop the habit of asking fewer but better questions:

  • Before you ask any question, count to three. The client will often continue with their own thinking, which you might otherwise have interrupted. As you gain confidence, extend the count to five, seven, ten, or more…
  • When you think of a good question, first ask yourself, For whose benefit am I asking this? If you still think it is useful to ask, hold onto it and encourage the client to continue. Do this at least twice. By the third opportunity to pose the question, either it will have matured and become more powerful, the client will have come up with the same question on their own, or they will have found a better question.

Dos and don’ts

  • Don’t waste time worrying whether you will have a question when it is needed – that will get in the way of your listening.
  • Do trust your intuition to express curiosity. I’m curious about what is going on for you at the moment doesn’t carry a question mark, but it implies a deeply compassionate level of questioning.
  • Avoid what Myles Downey calls queggestions (suggestions disguised as questions, such as Have you considered…?).
  • When questions you ask do have an impact, reflect upon why.
  • Remember that you are not the judge of whether a question was impactful or not – experienced coaches frequently find that clients value and are stirred most by apparently ordinary questions, and that “clever” questions often have little impact at all!

© David Clutterbuck, 2015