The inability to improve performance is frustrating and often hindered by not having a complete understanding of presenting issues, barriers, and constraints. Coaching is an effective way to discover what’s getting in the way.
The right coaching questions expedite the discovery process and help people get moving in new and better directions.
A typical coaching interaction normally starts with a conversation – a “Q & A” dialogue that leads to “discovery”– and continues until “complete” with a series of on-going conversations and discoveries. The coach’s primary role is to help the person being coached (whether you’re coaching yourself or someone else) see the current situation with greater clarity and discover ways to move to a more desirable and productive situation – a desired new state.
Here are a few examples of how coaching questions can be used to jump-start a coaching conversation and see situations from fresh and new perspectives. We believe you’ll find them helpful – whether you’re coaching yourself or someone else.
Example 1: Maintaining Follow-up to Improve Customer Retention
Maintaining contact with customers after the sale is key when you want to increase retention.
Staying in touch is the best way to continue to actively manage the customer experience with your product or service and to learn what you can do to strengthen the relationship.
Most importantly, ongoing follow-up enables you to avoid the trap of taking customers for granted – which is often a sure way to lose them to a competitor or some other company.
Questions:
- When it comes to customer retention, do you stay in-touch?
- How do you stay in-touch? Your preferred way or the customer’s way? Do you ask?
- Do you ask closed- or open-ended questions or a combination of both when you engage customers?
- When a typical follow-up ends, do you know if the customer is satisfied or not with your service and why?
- How is your ability to retain customers affected when you don’t follow up?
What have you learned? What might you want to do differently?
Have a QwikCoach License? Learn more
Example 2: Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication is a process by which information is passed from one person to another. It occurs in a split-second sequence, and includes both verbal and non-verbal activity. Studies show:
- Listeners hear 55% of the message based on the speaker’s body language or gestures,
- Listeners focus on and hear 38% of the message through voice tone, and
- Only 7% of the message is “heard” through the actual words spoken.
Questions:
- Body language and gestures count when you talk with customers and colleagues. Do you make good choice when it comes to both?
- Your tone matters! Do you always use one that’s appropriate?
- Are you mindful of the medium you use to communicate – face-to-face, phone, e-mail, messaging, etc. — and what affect it has on the communication process?
- Do you appreciate how your interpersonal communication style impacts customers – and colleagues?
What have you learned? What might you want to do differently?
Have a QwikCoach License? Learn more
Example 3: Active Listening
Hearing is a passive biological process that picks up sound waves and transfers them to the brain for possible decoding.
Listening, on the other hand, is a process that enables you to understand the meaning of another person’s message.
Active listening is an intense and focused process that allows you to take responsibility for successful communication by understanding messages completely.
Questions:
- How often to you prepare to listen by quieting your mind?
- Do you keep an open mind by “turning off” filters?
- Are you typically able to stay focused on what the other person is saying?
- Do you clarify and confirm to ensure a complete understanding?
- How do you think active listening might improve your ability to interact effectively with customers – and colleagues?
What have you learned? What might you want to do differently?
Have a QwikCoach License? Learn more
Bottom line:
There is no one definitive set of questions a coach asks during coaching interactions. But being able to formulate good questions is key when it comes to helping people discover new ways to work, act, and achieve results.
One of the strengths of QwikCoach (the online Coaching Tool developed by E-Coach Associates) is its ability to help people develop great coaching questions for a wide variety of workplace situations.