The Ultimate coaching question: What are you going to do differently?
If you have been following my work for a while, you already know that I think the right question at the right time can do magic. Powerful questions can come up at any time: in a team meeting, during a quick chat at the water cooler, or in a proper 1:1 employee feedback situation.
I believe everyone should be able to ask good questions. That is why I’ve created the 52 questions deck of coaching cards. If you haven’t seen it yet, this deck includes a set of questions that help PMs and their teams get their work done.
But there is a leadership aspect to asking good questions as well. Quality 1:1 conversations between you and your employees help them reach their full potential. In fact, the very structure of coaching is what we usually call “question-based sessions.” The coach spends the majority of their time asking questions rather than explaining or instructing.
I have collected quite a lot of questions over time and put most of them in my book, STRONG Product People. And I would absolutely recommend that you compile your own little list of great coaching questions to start using with your team. These questions should help people to:
Gain clarity e.g. What’s important to you right now? Is there something you need to tackle now?
Explore options & create a strategy for success e.g. What else could you do or what different kinds of options do you have to achieve this (goal)? How do you stay true to your principles while working to reach your goals?
Focus on one action and ask if you can help. e.g. What is your goal related to this issue? What will it be like if you achieve your goal? What can I do to support you better? What can I do more or less of? Why? If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
These are all great questions and should prompt a thoughtful and meaningful conversation with your coachee. But there is one question that I find to be the most powerful. It is: “What are you going to do differently?”
Why is this question so powerful? There are a few reasons:
It instigates change
It leaves the responsibility for this change to the coachee
It highlights that there is no change without you doing the first little step
It provokes solution-oriented thinking
It is often the case that the coachee will try to avoid answering. Of course, it’s important for you to be intentional about when you choose to ask this powerful question. Don’t try to open a conversation with it or spring it on your coachee during the last five minutes of your meeting.
As long as you’re being thoughtful about when you ask this question, once you’ve asked it, you should insist on getting an answer. That is the hard work of a coaching session, but it is always worth it.
Especially when the coachee feels some resistance in answering it, they are massively relieved once you help them come up with even the smallest change in their current behavioral pattern.
This has all been quite theoretical so far, so let’s take a moment to dig into a few specific examples. What are some realistic behavior changes you might arrive at with your coachees?
Example 1: Your coachee wants to get better at giving feedback
Let’s say that your coachee has said something like, “I’m too harsh when I give constructive feedback,” or “My feedback doesn’t land well.” You would first help them gain some clarity (Step 1 of the coaching cycle) by asking them to provide some examples and reflect on why this might be the case. Then, when you’re ready to move to Steps 2 and 3 of the coaching cycle, you ask them, “What will you be doing differently?” At this stage, you would be looking for an answer like, “I will focus on giving more positive feedback more often while I learn more about structured ways of giving constructive feedback.”
Note that they’re committing to one immediate action (giving more positive feedback) as well as one longer-term action (learning and applying structure to their constructive feedback).
Example 2: Your coachee says they’re not good at writing user stories or backlog items.
In this situation, your coachee might say something like, “My team is complaining that my user stories are awful” or “I can’t write backlog items without getting pushback from my team.” Again, you would dig in to find more specific examples and better understand what’s happening. When you ask your coachee, “What will you be doing differently?” you would be looking for an answer like, “I’m going to ask my team for help. We will work together on writing user stories for the next sprint so I can really grasp what ‘good’ looks like for them. Then we can discuss further options.”
Again, you’ve gotten your coachee to commit to one immediate action (co-creating with their team) and one longer-term action (revisiting this topic after the next sprint is over).
I do hope you’ll try this question in one of your next 1:1s. But remember to use it wisely. You need to settle on a topic and help the coachee gain some clarity regarding this topic first. But once that is done, it might be a good idea to ask the ultimate question.
I like to think of this question as a lighthouse on a hill. It takes work to get there. But the answer will guide the coachee’s actions and behaviors over the next days and weeks—like the guiding lights of the lighthouse. Until you see each other again.
