COACHING SOMEONE ON WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW

“It’s not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” Eugene Ionesco “To be a great coach, you need to be able to ask great questions.” (Starr, The Coaching Manual, p. 147) “Coaching does not mean changing lives; it means changing the questions we ask and being open to what happens...” Teri-E Belf, Coaching with Spirit

When it comes to questions, there’s power and wonder and magic in them. Further, questions provides you your primary tool as a coach. Once you create connection with a person or group, the most powerful thing you can do is to ask questions: precision questions, meta-questions, matrix questions, meaning–performance questions, well-formed outcome questions, and Socratic questions. Now with Socratic questions, you can especially avoid any temptation to give advice, suggestions, or to teach. They are that powerful.

Socrates believed that you can lead or facilitate a person to discover and to learn what he or she doesn’t know. His assumption was that people know things implicitly which they do not even know that they know. Consciously they say, “I don’t know.” Yet they do. They just do not know that they know, and they may not even believe that they do or could know.