“A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.” – John Wooden
Last week, we went through the first four questions of the seven questions in Michael Stanier’s great book, “The Coaching Habit.” This week we’ll wrap up with a look at the last three.
5. The Lazy Question: “How can I help?”
This question petrifies me. I couldn’t believe Stanier put it into the book, then I read the chapter. Now I think it is a great question!
My fear in asking this question is that I am about to get another to-do added to my already overflowing list. But Stanier says that is unlikely to happen.
Stanier teaches to ask this question for two reasons:
First, you are forcing your colleague to make a direct and clear request. The lazy part is that you didn’t have to play Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.
Second, “How can I help?” stops you from thinking you know the best way to help and leaping into action. This keeps you from wasting time and frustrating others.
Here is the beauty of the question. You don’t have to say “Yes.” You have several responses available other than “Yes.”
“No, I can’t do that.” This is tough for many of us to say but we need to practice. Being able to say No is required to lead well and to live a good life.
“I can’t do that, but I could ...” Offer a counter-proposal. Give them some choices you can live with.
“Let me think about / Let me check my calendar / Let me check with ...” Have these responses ready to go. They are a quick way to buy time without saying yes.
Whatever you do, make it a rule not to say yes on the spot. This is especially helpful for people-pleasers like me. Remember that anytime you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else – you just don’t know what that other thing is yet.
Before you ask the “lazy question” be ready with your responses and never say yes on the spot.
6. The Strategic Question: “If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
“A Yes is nothing without the No that gives is boundaries and form.”
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” – Michael Porter
As we mentioned earlier, most of us are prone to say Yes too quickly and No too seldomly. Saying Yes too quickly often leads to overwhelm and disappointment.
As a leader, you love it when someone says Yes because it just got something off your plate. But, the yes can be an empty yes unless we help the person fully understand the ramifications of their yes. Asking the strategic question slows down the process and helps everyone get clarity on what is being agreed to.
If we are on the receiving end of a request, we must slow down our response or we’ll say yes to way too much and often without fully understanding what we are saying yes to.
For the sake of the organization and your sanity, slow down the yeses. Ask more questions. Stay curious. Get ridiculous clarity on expectations and outcomes before saying or accepting a yes.
7. The Learning Question: “What was most useful to you?”
If we are curious, we learn a lot – and we forget almost all of it.
Much has been written on the topic of forgetting what people want us to learn. In the book “Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” the authors state it is essential to “interrupt the process of forgetting.”
What the authors and researchers found is the process of forgetting is automatic and starts when the learning occurs. The authors state that “reflection is a form of practice.”
By getting your colleague to reflect on the solution you reached, you are helping deepen the neural pathways that lead to long-term learning.
Academic Chris Argyris calls this “double-loop learning.” The first loop is solving the problem. The second loop is creating a learning moment about the insights found.
Create the habit of closing every conversation with the question, “What was most useful to you?” The question starts the process of embedding the learning. Not only did you solve the problem at hand but you just helped a colleague become better. That is what leading is all about!
In closing, here are the questions again.
1. The Kickstarter Question: “What’s on your mind?” This question invites the coachee to drive the discussion to where they need it to go – to what is most important to them at this time.
2. The AWE Question: “And what else?” The AWE question keeps you curious and keeps the advice monster at bay. It leads to more and better options.
3. The Focus Question: “What is the real challenge here for you?” This question hands the problem back to the coachee and forces them to struggle to determine what they really need to figure out.
4. The Foundation Question: “What do you want?” Even when we think we know what we want, we have a difficult time articulating it. The foundation question forces clarity.
5. The Lazy Question: “How can I help?” This question is “lazy” because it gets the other person to propose a solution without you needing to develop one.
6. The Strategic Question: “If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?” This question gets the coachee to decide if they are committed to the proposed solution.
7. The Learning Question: “What was most useful for you?” We learn when we reflect on what just happened. This question promotes learning for the coach and the coachee so both can build on top of the new learning.
To put this stuff into practice, I highly recommend you buy a copy of Stanier’s book, “The Coaching Habit” and check out his website at www.thecoachinghabit.com.
We love helping leaders build great companies and better lives for themselves and the people they lead. We’ve got some great free resources for you in our resource library. You can check them out: www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.
Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey.
Curt and the team at FHRS help leaders build great companies through Virtual CFO, strategy, tax and accounting services.
Curt is a syndicated business writer, speaker and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children.
