Ask powerful questions to achieve powerful results
by ken winston caine
The questions you ask and choose to explore shape the outcomes you achieve. The trick is to ask powerful questions.
They cut to the chase. They move you forward quickly and smartly.
Asking powerful questions is at the heart of “coaching” as it was developed by Thomas Leonard. And I’ve been collecting lists of powerful questions, or coaching questions, for 11 years — ever since I was first exposed to Leonard’s approach.
But simply being armed with a mile-long list of powerful questions does not make one a good coach. Or guarantee you magnificent, rapid, sustainable personal success. The good coach and the smart achiever know how to ask the right type of question at exactly the right moment.
Better, I think, to understand what a powerful question is, so that you can instinctively pose one when it is needed, than to have a long list of questions to sort through. (Though a list is valuable.)
So what is a powerful question?
The best explanation I have come across comes not from the world of life coaching or business coaching or corporate coaching, but from pioneers of The World Cafe process, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs.
They write, on their website, that a powerful question has eight defining characteristics:
A powerful question:
• Is simple and clear
• Is thought provoking
• Generates energy
• Focuses inquiry
• Surfaces assumptions
• Opens new possibilities
• Invites deeper reflection
• Seeks what is useful– from http://www.theworldcafe.com/know-how.htm#explore
How often do the questions you ask meet most of those criteria?
