5 Great Reasons To Ask Questions

Hi guys, this week I am writing about the importance of asking questions. This blog post is inspired by a fantastic book that I read some time ago: “Coaching Questions“.

The benefit of coaching opposed to advising is that asking coaching questions allow people to think, produce believable answers that can motivate them to act based on their ideas. Asking helps us to implement creating capability to the problem.

Asking questions also clarifies relationships between people. Advisors, mentors or consultants are experts, the role makes them a superior. Coaches ask for ideas, thus they are a peer. Questions praise a coach as a person and make a value equivalent.

How come this kind of approach changes the relationship and yourself? Just imagine that advisors´conversation is typically one-sided. The conversation is just about him, about his thoughts and ideas. People do not like when others talk about their own opinions all the time. But we do not see the fact we do it often ourselves.

The coaching pursuit helps your conversations to be less egoistic, minimise your thoughts, guidance. More importantly, it helps you to drive the conversation around the answers that might work. You will listen more to other person, your coach, and you reduce your input so that others can increase it. And that´s when the light comes in. The more you listen to others, more you realise how capable they are. You will realise how much they are able to do with a little assistance.

There are five reasons to ask questions.

The Coachee knows all the information
You know more than anyone else. All information is in your memories. For example, if you want to improve a relationship with your colleague, you are the one who remembers all situations when working with that person and you can remember things that worked with other colleagues in past, you know all details about the culture at workplace. This means that the coach does not have such information, it´s only you who owns this.

Asking Creates Buy-In
The expectation with coaching is that the core of the change is not knowing what to do but it´s the key is motivation. According to many studies, the research shows that people are motivated to achieve their own solutions and ideas. That means that when the coachee produces less ideal solution, it usually ends up with better results than if the coach would give better solution.

Asking helps to empower
People think that coaching helps them to make big decisions. Often they already know what they should do, they just miss the confidence and need someone to push them to do the step. Self-confidence is crucial in change. When you take others opinion vigorously, it is often encouraging. Asking can simply empower people to do things they couldn´t do.

Asking Develops Leadership Capacity
Leaderships equals to taking responsibility. Coach is like a leader. When a leader sees a problem, he usually says that someone needs to do something about it. It´s exactly what the coach does. By asking, the coachee is not anymore dependent on the answers from the coach.

Asking Creates Authenticity

The asking approach is the fastest way to build trust and transparency. The great thing about it is that we allow others to see the value of their ideas and help them to honor themselves. When you talk about things that people care about, the changes they make are really life-changing.

Hope you had enjoyed this blog post :).

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