Tool 11: Coaching Self and Others
Purpose: Coaches know that asking powerful questions of their clients is key to their success. This coaching tool spotlights special features of the QT methodology for coaching. Here we focus on the benefits of teaching the methodology to clients while using that same methodology to guide them through resolving the issues and goals they’ve presented.
Discussion: Simultaneously teaching the QT methodology to clients while guiding them through the issues and goals they’ve presented is an integral part of Question Thinking for coaching. As the client becomes increasingly skillful with these tools, and begins to experience their benefits first hand, the relationship between client and coach becomes increasingly egalitarian and collaborative. Through their shared knowledge of QT, coach and client are able to “speak the same language.” As with any coaching relationship, the message at the heart of QT-driven coaching is that the coach will not “fix” the client or the issue; instead, as clients develop skills with the tools and methods of QT they are better equipped to resolve issues and accomplish goals on their own. The coach provides the safe environment where clients gain practical experience with QT while applying it to their own issues and goals.
What clients learn in these coaching sessions makes a difference for outcomes in their current situation even as they are gaining skills for the future, to self-coach and be more effective at whatever they do. This extends to the client’s greater effectiveness with other people both inside and outside the working environment.
Ben’s story, throughout the book, illustrates how this process unfolds in a variety of life situations. Early in Ben’s first coaching session (Chapter 2) Joseph tells him about the QT methodology they will be using in their work together. Joseph describes it as “a system of skills and tools using questions to expand your approach to any situation.” He tells Ben that the tools he’ll be learning create a foundation for making wiser choices, asking more and better questions, and getting better results in everything he does. By introducing the methodology in this way Joseph alerts Ben to the fact that his learning the methodology is an integral part of the work they’ll be doing together.
Joseph goes on to share with Ben some of the theory behind this work and then presents the first tool: “Empower Your Observer.” He gives Ben a workbook that contains short instructions for the tools they will be working with— which is the workbook you are now reading. Each of the 12 tools includes practices for strengthening one’s skills.
How you introduce clients to the process described above is important. In the beginning of a coaching engagement, along with developing a trusting relationship and helping clients to articulate their goals, I introduce Question Thinking and the Choice Map. I explain that I’ve found that these tools and methods help people to better understand what’s been getting in the way of accomplishing their goals. The same tools serve as guides for developing skills for moving beyond any present limitations.
The language and concepts of QT are easily integrated into ongoing conversations with clients. You have probably already noticed how the Choice Map can help you to orient clients in terms of where they are in the Learner-Judger spectrum; for example, when clients have a Choice Map in front of them—especially important in phone or other electronic communication—the coach can ask, “Where would you locate yourself on the Choice Map right now? Are you in Judger? Are you in Learner? Are you in the Judger Pit?” A quick glance at the Choice Map, where these mindsets are graphically expressed, is instructive for both coach and coachee.
Learning Question Thinking is enhanced and accelerated whenever the client is able to immediately experience its benefits first-hand. And as the client’s experience and skill with QT grows, so also does the collaborative nature of the coaching sessions grow and deepen.
As clients become more self-aware and skillful at self-management and self-coaching, they are also gaining skill and confidence for building more effective relationships with colleagues and teams outside the coaching relationship. Clients frequently report on how simple it can be to introduce others to QT. As an example, the following note, which came from a coach who’d attended one of my workshops, demonstrates how quickly people can catch on to using the Choice Map:
I was with some friends at a restaurant and one of them expressed concern about her relationship with her daughter and how they were always arguing. I pulled out a copy of the Choice Map that I carry in my purse and we began looking at ways it might help her. She studied it for a moment and suddenly her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “I’ve been in Judger with my daughter!” She immediately started reflecting on ways her Judger mindset had triggered her daughter’s defensiveness and anger. Then we talked about Switching questions and she said, “This is like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders.” Later, as we got ready to leave she pointed to my Choice Map and asked shyly, “May I keep this?”
Oftentimes, people with no previous exposure to the Choice Map respond to it by saying, “This just makes perfect sense!” For anyone already familiar with Question Thinking, the Choice Map quickly becomes a powerful organizing image for understanding, retaining, and applying the entire methodology. As a client recently told me, “The image of the Choice Map is like a mental magnet that helps me recall everything you’ve taught me.” The map provides coach and client with a shared vocabulary for working together, while at the same time empowering clients with a highly effective self-coaching tool they can use on an ongoing basis.
Practice 1: Recall a past coaching session, before you learned about QT, when you were less than satisfied with the outcome. Perhaps you have found yourself replaying that session in your mind, thinking you should’ve, could’ve, would’ve done it better . . . if only. Now imagine that you are redoing that session, this time introducing the Choice Map to help your client to articulate what might have been getting in his way and to better understand where he and others might have been coming from in their problematic situation. How do you think introducing the Choice Map might have made a difference in the success of that session?
Practice 2: It’s good to keep in mind that even the most experienced coaches can go Judger—yes, even about their clients. In Chapter 3, Joseph demonstrated this when he told Ben the story about his superintendent client, when he caught himself in Judger and switched into Learner. Later, in Chapter 8, Joseph tells Ben about a saying of Alexa’s: “Learner begets Learner. And Judger begets Judger.” This is a good reminder of how important it is to be in Learner when sharing the Choice Map and using QT in general. As Joseph tells Ben in Chapter 3, “No one can help anyone else from a Judger place.”
This practice is an opportunity to reinforce your own Learner mindset by checking in with yourself whenever you are in a coaching session or otherwise sharing the Choice Map. You may discover you have some Judger going on with whomever you’re speaking to—whether it’s a client, a friend, a colleague, or a family member. On rare occasions, I’ve seen people share the Choice Map in a subtle Judger way, aiming to show how the other person is wrong and is in Judger. If this ever happens to you, it’s time to reset yourself to Learner or postpone sharing the Choice Map or talking about the mindset work until you can do so from a Learner place.
In Chapter 5, Kitchen Talk, we have an example of this resetting process. Ben has nervously posted the Choice Map on the refrigerator at Joseph’s suggestion. As he and his wife Grace discuss it the next morning, there are a number of times when Ben catches himself in Judger and needs to manage his own mindset to stay in Learner. He uses what he has learned from Joseph and coaches himself: Don’t go there, buddy. Then he takes a deep breath, shrugs his shoulders, and recovers himself.
As you get ready to share the Choice Map with another person, consider where you would locate yourself on the map just then. If you discover some Judger you could ask yourself: Why am I in Judger? What Switching questions could I ask myself to move into Learner? What are my goals in sharing the Choice Map with this person?
Use this exercise to explore strategies for staying in Learner throughout any conversation or session, whether it’s with a colleague, friend, family member, or client.