Questions regarding an initial question or issue Answers

What is significant about this question? |

Is this a straightforward question to answer? |
Why do you think that? |
Are there any assumptions we can take from this question? |
Is there another important question that follows on from this one? |
 
Questions about assumptions Answers
Why would someone assume that X? |
What are we assuming here? |
Is there a different assumption here? |
Are you saying that X? |
 
Questions of viewpoint Answers
Are there alternative views? |
What might someone who thought X think? |
How would someone else respond, and why? |
 
Questions of clarification Answers
What do you mean when you say X? |
Can you rephrase and explain that differently? |
What is the main issue here? |
Can you expand that point further? |
 
Questions of implication and consequence Answers
Why do you think this is the case? |
Is there any other information needed? |
What led you to that belief? |
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence? |
 
 Questions of evidence and reasoning Answers
Can you provide an example? |
Why do you think this is the case? |
Is there any other information needed? |
What led you to that belief? |
Are there any reasons to doubt the evidence? |
 
Questions regarding origin Answers
Have you heard this somewhere? |
Have you always felt this way? |
What caused you to feel that way? |

Why Ask Questions as a Coach?

Questions play a crucial role in coaching for several reasons. Throughout different stages of the development journey,
they may serve different functions, but overall – questions invite the client to find the answers themselves.

Without any questions, coaching would be somewhat like giving instruction without raising awareness, lecturing
without self-reflection, and it would be tough to spark the same accountability that drives results.

Asking questions and listening carefully to the responses allows a coaching conversation to flow properly in the right
direction – whether that’s toward setting goals or planning specific actions.

They also allow you as a professional to stimulate some self-reflection in your client, giving them more in-depth insight
into their values (“Why do I want this?”), their thought processes (“Why haven’t I tried X or Y before?”) and chart a
path forward (“How can I get started?”). For life coaches, in particular, there are at least a few questions which have a
place in every session.
What Are Some Good Questions to Ask as a Life Coach?
To be effective, a life coach needs to understand their client’s envisioned future and their existing situation. They also
need to understand what they hold most meaningful in their lives – their values – and get a good overview of how to
help their client overcome their perceived obstacles.

Understanding Your Client’s Mindset

What makes your client happy? What is it that they want more of in their life – and are they aware of what brings these
positive emotions about?

These questions help you learn a little more about your client as a person, and can help them start thinking about
creating more of these moments. They also help the client begin thinking about possible long-term life goals.

For instance:

 What is the happiest part of your daily routine?

 What are some things you feel grateful for?
 In the past week/month/year, what were your three most positive moments?

Establishing Direction

It is also useful to find out what your client hopes to achieve from their sessions with you; clarity helps you tailor your
process to their time frame, whether it’s a longer sequence or a one-off meeting (Page, 2018).

 What do you hope to have accomplished by the end of our session(s) together?
 How will you specifically know what success looks like for you?
 What would be the most significant success you could hope for from our meeting?

Tapping into Values

Often, clients will be looking to solve a problem as well as achieve a goal. For instance, a client may feel he is not
living up to the values he believes in by being an inattentive father. If you think it’s appropriate, you might dig just a bit
deeper into these to tease out a compelling why – helping you later to gain commitment and motivation (Reardon,
2010).

With a little more time, it can also help to use a structured Values Assessment to pin down what your client considers
important.

 What other aspects of your life do you feel will be improved by accomplishing this?
 How will your achieving this goal help others around you?
 Why is it important to you to accomplish your goal?

Encourage Self-Inquiry

Coaching is not about spoon-feeding answers; it’s about inviting the coachee to take a good look inside at their
perspectives. Self-inquiry is vital in helping clients motivate, plan for barriers, and develop a persuasive rationale for
action (Page, 2018).

 How do you feel you could best motivate yourself?

 What are the best ways for you to support yourself at this point?
 If you had no restrictions at all, who would you be?

When asking about or discussing a client’s goals, it helps to make it relevant. These questions are phrased generically,
but should ideally be customized to the coachee. “How will achieving this goal enrich your life?” would thus become
“How would becoming a professional builder enrich your life?”

Many life coaches choose to use some form of framework to structure their sessions, and the GROW Model is a well-
known structured processes and one of the most popular available.

How To Ask Questions

 In-session therapy is always recommended as the preferred pathway to get to
know your client and ask the base questions to build rapport.

Yet logistical challenges often become a stumbling block for continued coaching.

Whether it is time, social distancing, or remote locations, being able to connect with your client using a smart app, is
the ideal solution for challenges that obstructs continued engagement.

Quenza is an online coaching application that allows you to assign customized questionnaires to your client, ensuring a
continuous conversation and a simple way to ask questions. The client can answer these questions in the privacy of
their home using the encrypted secure platform, which is GDPR and HIPAA compliant.

This smart app, which is cross-platform compatible, also provides multi-media support. Setting up a video session with
your client to ask coaching questions face to face is easy and efficient.

In addition, the tool is fully customizable, allowing you to assign care pathways suited to each individual. As a coach,
you can track their real-time progress and stay on top of their accomplishments.

To find out more about making this smart app an integral part of your coaching conversations, visit the Quenza
website.
What are Grow Model Coaching Questions?
The GROW Model is a four-step framework that life coaches can use to help structure coaching sequences as a whole
or to guide individual conversations with clients. It is an acronym, each letter representing a key stage:

Goal: Establishing a client’s overall objectives;

Reality: Understanding their current situation or “reality” before taking action;
Options/Opportunities: Looking into possible options they might pursue; and
Way Forward/What’s Next/Will: Deciding on the actions they will take going forward.
Source: Compassiontolead.net (2019)

Given that each stage has a distinct aim, a life coach will be required to ask different relevant questions as the process
unfolds.
Goal

The core question of this first stage is What is your long-term goal?

This stage aims to tap into the personal values that underpin your client’s desires and create some clarity around what
they want to achieve.

For example:

1. What matters to you the most concerning this value/life domain?

2. What are you keen to accomplish through this personal coaching sequence/session?
3. What would you like to see happen?
4. What is it specifically that you want to achieve?
5. Describe your ideal outcome from this coaching…
6. Tell me more about this perfect result?
7. Why do you want to achieve this goal?
8. What is the deeper meaning or personal significance that this goal has for you?
9. What positive things do you feel will happen if you accomplish what you’re trying to achieve?
10.Tell me how you will know if you’ve attained your desired outcome?

Current Reality

This primary question here is What is your context or situation right now?

In this next phase, your primary goal as a coach is to help your client gain more awareness of their existing situation.
‘Current Reality’ questions also help you understand a little more about where you’re starting from together so that you
can help them as you progress.

Relevant GROW Model questions in this stage are designed to facilitate self-evaluation, helping your client discover
what may have been standing in their way of achieving their goal. Active listening plays a vital role during this stage –
as you probe deeper into a client’s responses, it’s not unusual to uncover thought patterns or schema that are worth
challenging.

Questions may include:

1. At this point, what’s happening now to you? What impact or influence is this having?
2. Tell me more about this…with whom? Where? When?
3. Have you tried doing anything thus far to achieve your goal?
4. I’m curious about what you did… How did it go for you? Share some examples with me…
5. Where do you feel you are now concerning your life goal? Would you be able to rank this out of 10?
6. So far, what has helped your progress? What has held you back? Tell me about the last time this happened…
7. What do you feel you need to achieve your goal?
8. If you asked for this resource, what would happen?
9. What could you do differently this time around?
10.Has anybody you know achieved the same goal? How did they manage?

Options

The main underpinning question here is What are your options or opportunities for action?

GROW Model questions at the Options stage are focused on enabling your client to investigate different possible
pathways, solutions, or routes to accomplishing their goal. It may be helpful to take a brainstorming approach here as
you collaborate and pitch in with your ideas where necessary.

Possible questions include:

1. What do you see as the first step to accomplishing your goal?

2. What might you do to take you closer after that?
3. Can you think of some alternatives? Is there another way?
4. Who might you ask for help? Who else?
 5. In the past, what has worked for you? What did you learn from that?
6. Tell me what you think would happen if you tried doing that?
7. What are the pros and cons of this option?
8. Which possible pathway do you feel prepared to go down?
9. What would you do if time/money/resources weren’t an issue?
10.How will you measure your progress using this option?

Will/What’s Next/Way Forward

The key questions of this stage are What will you do next? What’s the way forward?

Having generated multiple pathways for your client to pursue, it’s time to narrow it down to a single realistic option
and garner commitment to it. Asking the right questions in this stage will help your client solidify an action plan and
feel motivated to start following it.

Here are some questions that may help:

1. Which opportunity are you going to pursue?

2. What specific actions will you take to achieve your goal? What is your time frame?
3. What are the steps you’re going to take? What’s the very first thing you will do?
4. What are the next three steps? What else?
5. Have you considered the potential barriers?
6. Tell me how you plan to overcome these obstacles…
7. Who will you ask to help you along the way? What else will you need?
8. How committed do you feel to this particular opportunity, out of 10?
9. What are some ways you can get to 10?
10.How are you going to know that you’ve succeeded?
With plenty of potential questions prepared, it becomes much easier for coaches to adapt to a client’s needs. For the
GROW Model to be implemented successfully, it’s important to use it as a guideline and to appreciate that no
conversation ever flows seamlessly.

What is Instructional Coaching?

Unlike life coaching, instructional coaching is a content-based approach to development that is intended to develop
teachers. Content-based means that instructional coaching may cover specific topics such as literacy or maths; its goal
is to positively impact student outcomes through the professional development of educators (Cornett & Knight, 2009).

Instructional coaches require substantial training, but findings show that the results can have a broad and significant
impact. Among these impacts, instructional coaching has been linked to enhanced self-efficacy in educators and more
positive teacher attitudes (Vogt & Rogalla, 2009).

Instructional coaching is not directly related to positive psychology, but it draws on the same core concept of helping
others realize their full potential – in this case, as educators.

23 Questions for Managers and Leaders

Workplace coaching can involve set one-on-one sessions with employees, following a structured sequence such as the
GROW Model, Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, or any number of frameworks.

As leaders gain coaching experience, however, they also tend to find these questions a useful way of helping others
develop – by working them into everyday conversations.

Clarifying Goals

Many coaching models take a results-focused approach by beginning with the goal in mind. Questions include
(Harvard Business Review, 2014; HR Gazette, 2019; Lipovsky, 2019):
 1. What is one key thing you want to achieve at this moment?
2. What are the three areas you wish to develop, enhance, or grow?
3. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
4. Imagine you’ve just ended the perfect week at work. What outcomes make you proudest?
5. In what specific areas would you like to be at your professional best?

Open-ended ‘probing’ questions also come in handy when exploring the reasons behind a goal or challenge:

1. Describe this goal or challenge a bit more…

2. What are some ways this challenge is impacting you or others?
3. Tell me about why you see this as an ideal professional outcome?
4. Help me understand why this change is particularly meaningful to you?
5. Could you tell me how this would help you and your team achieve its mission?

Generating Solutions

1. What do you think would be a good first step?

2. What has worked for you in the past when it comes to your professional growth?
3. How might you draw on that same approach in this case?
4. What do you feel you should do differently?
5. Tell me about the resources that would be helpful? How or where might you acquire those?

If previous approaches have not been successful, leaders can help by encouraging their co-worker to think outside the
box.

1. What would you do if resources were not a concern?

2. What else can you think of?
3. How might you broaden your current line of thinking?

Encouraging Accountability, Commitment, and Motivating Action

 1. What are some concrete steps you could take to achieve this goal?
2. How might you turn these steps into a plan?
3. What will success look like? How will you know you’ve achieved your goal?
4. How will you prepare for each step?
5. How do you plan to motivate yourself when obstacles arise? What are some ways to motivate yourself to get
started?

It’s critical to remember that these questions are intended to spark a guided discussion and that listening plays a crucial
role in the coaching conversation that follows. There will always be points in a conversation where a leader needs to
suggest alternatives, challenge an employee’s thinking, or offer resources to help them develop a viable plan.

12 Questions to Ask When Coaching for Health

Leaders and life coaches aren’t the only professionals who can benefit from asking coaching questions. In the
healthcare industry, “coaching for health” refers to an evidence-based approach that aims to empower rather than
simply inform clients about their physical wellbeing (Rogers & Maini, 2016).

In a clinical context, coaching also tries to:

 Help patients self-motivate by looking at the values that relate to their health;
 Encourage behavioral change, by having clients consider the health-related outcomes of their actions; and
 Facilitate greater mental wellbeing in both practitioners and patients through a more positive relationship.

Coaching for health can also involve frameworks; T-GROW is one example. A variant of the popular GROW model,
T-GROW stands for Topic, Goal, Reality, Options, and What Next. Example questions include (Coachingforhealth.org,
2019):

1. What is your focus for today? (Topic)

2. What is it you’d like to get from our conversation? (Topic)
3. What matters the most to you regarding this? (Goal)
 4. What do you imagine it would look like if you could accomplish this? (Goal)
5. Describe the existing situation… (Reality)
6. What do you think you will need to do? (Reality)
7. Have you successfully handled a similar situation before? (Reality)
8. What might your family or friends suggest that you do? (Options)
9. What can you control about this situation? (Options)
10.What advice would you give someone else in a similar situation? (Options)
11.What’s your next step after today? (What Next)
12.How can you keep yourself on track with this? (What Next)

Jenny Rogers’ book Coaching for Health: Why it works and how to do it is an excellent potential resource for clinicians
wanting to learn more about the practice.

10 Questions to Ask as a Job or Career Coach

Career coaching questions are similar in some respects to life coaching questions and different in others. Whereas life
coaching questions can be related to a range of domains: emotions, relationships, health, family, or similar, career
coaching is focused on job-related ambitions, looking at aspects such as performance, skills, future direction, and
professional aspirations, among others.

Regardless, career coaches are still required to help foster self-awareness in their coachees – the accountability still
rests with the co-worker who is looking for some direction. Similar to life coaching, career coaching will typically
involve:

 Setting objectives and determining priorities;

 Developing a positive mindset;
 Challenging unhelpful thought patterns;
 Helping to change unproductive behaviors;
 Strength-spotting; and
 Fostering motivation.
With these in mind, the following questions may be helpful (Lancer et al., 2016).

1. What matters the most to you in your professional life? What do you believe passionately in?
2. What skills, talents, or competencies do you have that you are most proud of? Which make you the happiest?
Which make you feel accomplished?
3. What would you love to be able to list on your ideal resume? How about if there were no barriers or boundaries?
4. Describe the last time you felt driven and motivated by your role (current or past). What were you doing? Who
was around? Where were you?
5. When trying to learn a skill you’re passionate about, what are some barriers you’ve faced? How did you
overcome these? Which did you need help with?
6. What do you feel is preventing you from learning the knowledge you’re after? Have you asked anyone else for
help? If so, what happened?
7. What is one step you could take to get you closer to that career goal? What kind of development or opportunities
might you need to make that step? What opportunities can you create by yourself?
8. What can you practically achieve between now and next week/month/quarter to take you closer to your goal?
9. How would you go about achieving your career goal if you had unlimited resources? What is already possible
right now?
10.Have you told others around you about your career goals? Has anyone achieved a similar objective?

As you have probably noticed, there is a similar theme running through these and other coaching questions in other
domains. Great coaching is about empowering your client to find the answers themselves, whether that means looking
at their professional skills or their whole lives in a different light.

15 Narrative Coaching Questions & Answers to Look Out For

Narrative coaching was developed by Dr. David Drake of the Moment Institute. It is (Drake, 2019):

“...a mindful, experiential, and holistic approach that helps people shift their stories about themselves, others, and life
itself to create new possibilities and new results.”
With narrative coaching, a client is invited to become more attuned to the stories they tell themselves and let go of
those which are unhelpful. By doing so, they are encouraged to create more useful narratives. Six key principles guide
the practice; these include the following:

 That everything a coach needs is right in front of them;

 That they should try to be fully present to reality without judgment;
 Speaking is only valuable when it offers something better than silence;
 The emphasis is on encouraging experiences rather than explanations; and
 That clients should remain actively connected and engaged with whatever they have externalized while they
work with it.

The role of the coach is first to help clients become aware of where they are situated in their stories by
asking Situate questions such as:

1. Describe what you can observe…

2. What did you say to yourself or tell yourself at that point?
3. What did you then do?
4. How did it end?

Next, a coach helps them gain clarity on what they are looking for from the session. This informs how things unfold by
establishing a purpose and direction for your time together. This Search phase can include questions such as:

1. What is it you want to change, and why?

2. What is driving you to do it a different way?
3. What would you prefer to have as an alternative ending to this story?
4. What would need to change in your perspectives to accomplish that alternative outcome?

The third phase of narrative coaching is called the Shift phase, during which a client readies themselves to leave the old
story behind. Because clients come to the coaching session with a question (conscious or subconscious), a coach then
helps them experiment with new stories that they want to create.
For example:

1. What do you feel is in the way of you making this change?

2. What will you need in place to get started?
3. What past experiences can you draw from to help you make this pivot?
4. What can you do instead of [what you’ve done before]?

Finally, a narrative coach should try to integrate the changes their client has experimented with – creating a new
narrative which they can tell themselves the next time a similar situation arises. Sustain phase questions are about
making plans and identifying ways to deal with challenges that may occur. They include:

1. What obstacles do you feel could come your way?

2. How could you work with these challenges and experience your new narrative?
3. How will this story support you to change?

You’ll find more on narrative coaching in David Drake’s book Narrative Coaching: The Definitive Guide to Bringing
New Stories to Life.

7 Questions Designed for the First Therapy Session

The first therapy session must focus on relationship building and creating rapport, which are necessary to establish an
effective foundation for a practitioner–client relationship, often referred to as the therapeutic alliance. The outcomes of
therapy are heavily dependent on the quality of this relationship (Lambert & Barley, 2001).

Ideally, the first therapy session should be a form of positive inception so the practitioner can set the stage for future
interactions. Carl Rogers (1961) used to say that the therapist must create an environment where everyone can be
themselves.

Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding
your whole life.
 Shannon L. Alder

The very first question in therapy is usually about the presenting problem or the chief complaint for which the client
comes to therapy, often followed by an exploration of the client’s past experience with therapy, if any, and their
expectations of future outcomes of therapy.

1. What brings you here today?

For clients who need encouragement to open up, it may be helpful to remark on their bravery in seeking therapy.

For those who are at the other extreme and go into a lengthy and detailed explanation of their issues, perhaps having
been in therapy before, it is best to listen empathically first before complimenting them on how well they appear to
know themselves and how they have thought a lot about what they would like to talk about in therapy.

2. Have you ever seen a counselor before?

For those who are in therapy for the first time, observing how comfortable and confident they are in talking about the
challenges in their life can help set the stage for further disclosure.

It may be helpful to set some expectation of what is going to happen in the therapeutic process by explaining how
asking questions is at the core of the process and reassuring the client that they should feel free to interrupt at any time
and to steer the conversation to where they need it to go.

If the client has seen a counselor before, it can prove very valuable to inquire further about their previous experience in
therapy by asking about frequency, duration, and issues discussed during their previous engagements, as well as one
thing they remember most that a former counselor told them.

An important aspect for gauging clients’ engagement in the process of therapy is asking them about what went right or
didn’t turn out the way they would have liked in their previous therapeutic engagement, as this can point to where they
place the sense of responsibility for their situation.
Inquiring if the client achieved the results they sought and if they have been successful in maintaining them outside of
the therapeutic relationship can also provide valuable insight into their motivation for change.

3. What do you expect from the counseling process?

Establishing a mutual agreement and setting expectations for the engagement is crucial to making progress. Clients’
goals and preferences for the format and level of interaction need to be taken into consideration.

Some clients like to vent and have the counselor listen; others want a high level of interaction and a spirited back-and-
forth. It is also important to inquire how the client learns best and if they like to receive homework.

Other examples of questions that can point to the tone and flow of future communications can include the following:

4. How many meetings do you think it will take to achieve your goals?
5. How might you undermine achieving your own goals?
6. How do you feel about using good advice to grow from?
7. How will we know when we have been successful in achieving your goals for therapy?

Therapy Intake Questions to Ask Patients

 Levy et al. (2018) analyzed records from healthcare providers and found that:

 45.7% of adults avoided telling their providers that they disagreed with their care recommendations.
 81.8% of adults withheld information because they didn’t want to be lectured or judged.

Many aspects of clients’ lives can influence their engagement and progress in therapy.

Indeed, questions about preexisting medical conditions, current and past treatments, medications, and family history are
essential to the effective assessment of needs and the successful provision of therapeutic treatment. Therefore, having a
clear picture of these details is a critical part of the initial intake process.
In order to gather this information securely and efficiently, therapists are increasingly drawing on digital technologies.
For instance, using a blended care platform such as Quenza (pictured here), therapists can design and distribute
standardized sets of intake materials, such as forms and agreements, that clients can complete on their own devices and
at a time that suits them.

The benefits of providing intake forms digitally is that they can facilitate better documentation and record keeping for
practitioners. Additionally, and unlike paper forms, they can be programmed to ensure no critical questions are
accidentally missed.

It is important to note that while most therapists do not prescribe medication, many often partner with other medical
professionals by making recommendations, particularly in instances when clients have been referred for therapy.

An intake form is attached and can be a useful guide for some of the issues that may require further exploration.

15 Useful Therapy Questions to Ask Yourself

We get into thinking ruts and routines and often function on autopilot without giving much consideration to the way we
go about our day or spend our time and energy.

We can break this mindless cycle by asking meaningful questions of ourselves and reflecting deeply on our thoughts,
emotions, and behavior. Many self-help therapy books have popularized a way of doing just that.

One such approach can be found in vastly popular notebooks that provide inspirational therapy quotes or reflective
writing prompts that get our cognitive wheels spinning.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
John Fowles, The Magus
Another important form of self-inquiry is to ask yourself questions that we can’t answer honestly in the presence of
anyone else, probing and burning questions that we can often only answer for ourselves. They may require some
reflection, examination of values, and perhaps writing, if only to organize our thoughts.

Here is a list of important questions we should revisit periodically:

 Assessing our life satisfaction – Tools like the Wheel of Life (accessible via the linked post) or one of the
many Happiness Assessments are a great place to start.
 Exploring meaning in our lives – Our masterclass in Meaning and Valued Living is a great place to start.
 Defining our values – value exploration exercises
 Finding character strengths – VIA Strengths Assessment
 Visualizing goals – SMART goal setting, tracking how we invest our time with experience sampling method or
Miracle Question (included below)
 Cultivating gratitude – Three good things exercise
 Practicing forgiveness – Empty chair technique (included below)
 Making bucket lists

Other useful questions are those that we can use to motivate ourselves. For example, appreciative inquiry questions
focus on strengths and the propelling power our past successes can have on self-efficacy and motivation toward goal
pursuit.

Here are a few examples of questions and prompts based on appreciative inquiry:

 Think back through your career. Locate a moment that was a high point, when you felt most productive and
engaged. Describe how you felt and what made the situation possible.
 Without being humble, describe what you value most about yourself and your work.
 Describe your three concrete wishes for your future.
 Describe the most energizing moment, a real “high” from your professional life. What made it happen?
 How do you stay professionally affirmed, renewed, enthusiastic, and inspired?
Sometimes, self-therapy can feel like chasing our tail, particularly for those who already live in their heads a bit too
much and may feel a bit stuck.

The most important questions to ask ourselves at this point are those that allow us to evaluate whether we should be
reaching for help and if our situation warrants considering therapy.

 Have I struggled to be myself lately?

 Has daily life felt harder lately?
 Do I have a confidante who I can trust to be impartial?
 Is there a big choice in my life I have been struggling with?
 Is my worry increasing, and are my thoughts less logical?
 Have I lost interest in things I used to love lately?
 Have friends been avoiding me or saying they have been worried about me?
 Am I just not bouncing back from something?
 Do I have a habit that I keep secret from others that causes me ongoing shame and life problems?
 Do I spend most of my time feeling worthless compared to others?