In her seminal book Coaching Skills: A handbook, Jenny Rogers provides a set of seventeen 'magic' questions. These are expanded in the book:
- What is the issue?
- What makes this an issue now?
- Who owns this issue?
- How important is it on a scale of 1-10
- How much energy do you have for a solution on a scale of 1-10
- What are the implications of doing nothing?
- What have you already tried?
- Imagine this problem’s been solved: what would you see, hear, feel?
- What is standing in the way of that outcome?
- What’s you own responsibility for what has been happening?
- What early signs are there that things might be getting better?
- Imagine you are at your most resourceful. What do you say to yourself about this issue?
- What are the options for action here?
- What criteria will you use to judge the options?
- Which option seems the best one against those criteria?
- So what is the next step?
- When will you take it?
Rogers (2009) pp. 68-71
Other useful questions include:
- What do you want?
- What other choices do you have?
- What will this goal get for you?
- What is important to you about that?
- What are you willing to give up to accomplish this?
- What are you willing to change
- What were you trying to achieve when you did that?
- What can you learn from this?
- What will you do differently next time?
- What can you do to make a difference?
- What could be stopping you from taking action?
Notice that most of these are what questions, with a few how, when and who. None of them are why questions.
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