A THINKING CHECKUP

When it comes to the coach conversation, the quality of the conversation that you facilitate inevitably depends on both the quality of the questions you ask and the quality of the language that both you and your client uses. And that depends on the quality of your thinking.

First, questions. As you know, in ACMC we monitor the quality of your opening question and have a place in the benchmarks for “wimpy opening.” That would entail a weak question that would only invite some surface level response and not getting to the heart of things. “So, what would you like to talk about?” Wimpy! More recently, after the last several ACMCs I decided I would begin listening not only to weak questions at the beginning of the coaching, but to other questions that are weak, shallow, and superficial. Weak questioning keeps the conversation shallow. Deep meta-questions takes your client inward to the heart of the matter— the person’s over-riding meanings.