NEVER ASK “WHY?” WHEN YOUR CLIENT IS IN A NEGATIVE STATE

During Coaching Mastery you have heard it said many times— “Don’t ask ‘why’ when your client is in a negative state.” And you probably heard the reason why: If your client is in a negative state and you ask “Why are you feeling that?” “Why did you do that?” the person will give you reasons! That is, the person will justify it, rationalize it, come up with some understanding to validate it. Simple enough.

Well, it is actually more complex than that. That’s because the why question does more. What the why question assumes is that there is a cause for the person’s state or experience and that the person consciously chose it. “Why did you not get this report in on time?” “Why did you get upset and say those cruel words?” Why invites a person to think that there’s a single, and simple reason for why things happened, and that all we have to do is understand the why, then we would change. Yet that’s a very big assumption, one that frames things in ways that really do not support the coaching process.