Powerful Questioning: Life-blood of Professional Coaching

ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential, which is particularly important in today’s uncertain and complex environment. Please mark the key phrases here; ‘thought- provoking’ and ‘creative’! We will deal with them in subsequent paragraphs.

The word ‘Coaching’ comes from ‘coach’ meaning- to transport something from one place to the other; here in the world of professional coaching it means shifting client’s frame of reference from one state to the other in order to elicit lasting behavioural changes- a precursor for sustainable ‘Doing’ and ‘Being’ changes in client’s life. In order to affect such a shift, the coach has the most trusted and versatile tool- Insightful questions! Like any other forms of effective human interaction and conversation, questions are the most powerful levers that prod the listener (read, client) into self-introspection and deep-diving within him/herself. A professional coach operates with the fundamental doctrine that a client has all the resources and wherewithal within him/herself to make the desired transformation. Then a coach facilitates a process similar to ‘guided-discovery’ and incisive questions are the cornerstone of the approach a coach adopts. Such powerful questioning is both an art and a science – art in the sense that a coach masters the craft of such incisive questions through practice and experience; science in the sense that an impactful question has a definite anatomy- we can call it ICE- Intent, Content & Experience (for the client).

As professionals, we know that open-ended and closed-ended are the two broad types of questions to elicit desired response in a conversation. However, for a coach any and all open-ended questions are just not good enough! If a coach partners with a client in thought-provoking and creative episodes of coaching engagements then the coach must go beyond the usual engagement questions (often the open-ended types) to those which have the potential to create a shift in the reference-frame for the client. This is achieved by the coach by creating a certain ‘vacuum’ or ‘space’ in coaching parlance. This space is a uniquely powerful and a provocateur of sort for the client, nudging him/her into self-reflect mode wherein the client goes deeper into him/herself and try to dig out the unique attributes, natural gifts and talents. In a way, such questions make the client more resourceful. The most impactful of coaching questions effectively create this space or vacuum. For example, a good open ended question in normal conversation might sound as ‘What all options do you have to cope-up with the irresistible issue at home front?’ However, for a coaching conversation in similar circumstances the coach might ask his client ‘In case the approach that you have chosen fails what other alternatives could you think of?’ The latter assumes that the client has already reviewed his/her options (if not already, then it does provoke the client to swing into action) and is resourceful enough to creatively think and decide for him/herself. This is a great deal of empowerment and taking control of the situation for the client.

Subsequently, we look into the process of powerful questioning (one of the eleven core competencies of a professional coach from ICF) and we can divide this section into three distinct aspects- objective of asking evocative questions, what incisive questions are and what incisive questions are not!

First, the purpose for a coach to ask such powerful and sometimes discomforting questions to the client is to

• Shake and shift the frame of reference for the client with which s/he approaches the issue at hand
• Provoke the client to get in touch with his/her deeper sense of purpose, often called life-purpose and values
• Create and visualize a future that doesn’t exists now but with a premise that the client has necessary resources within self to bring this creative piece into fruition

The coach often acts out of sheer inquisitiveness and curiosity to learn the client better and in the process make the client more self-aware too- a journey of guided self-discovery and contemplation that nudges the client into action. Deep-listening in conjunction with such evocative questions make for the perfect pair of tools that a professional coach often employs. When the coach poses such impactful questions followed by a deep listening and being present with the client, it creates the vacuum (space) for the client to discover alternatives and resources which otherwise would have eluded him/her. This is precisely what many a coaches call ‘interrupting the pattern’. After all, coaching is to break the usual flow and allow the client to divert the flow in an uncharted terrain and such conversations mediated through evocative questions help the client see and pursue a new path to meaningfulness in life.

What isn’t a powerful question in coaching context? This will help us frame what powerful questioning in coaching is. A coaching question is NOT,

• A tool or technique to establish the coach as intellectually and cognitively superior to the client (spare that for the mentors)
• An approach by the coach to engage in a verbal duel (spare that for the consultants)
• A means to elicit reams of information that are rooted in the past with little emphasis for forward looking discourse by the client (spare that for managers)

So far we have spoken of open-ended powerful questioning techniques. Professional coaches are craftsmen of timely closed-ended questions also. These closed-ended questions help the client zero-in on the outcomes and action-steps. How to optimally place a closed-ended question in a coaching conversation is a skilful task- do it pretty early in the conversation and you have the client submitting by saying ‘I don’t know’! When applied at the opportune time in the course of coaching engagement these questions will jolt the client into serious contemplation and subsequently, into action. So we see definitive roles that various types of evocative questions have in a powerful coaching engagement. A master coach will ask such incisive questions with élan and ease thereby making the coaching conversation more natural and spontaneous- hygiene for the client to reveal his deeper states of meaning and resourcefulness.

As we often say, powerful questioning in coaching is a journey to unknown but welcoming future state for both the coach and the client- a journey that every professional coach worth his salt has to undertake for the superior coaching outcome. Are you ready yet?

Time to re-skill our educators!

In order to put learning on the agenda in French higher education and help the educator understand how students learn, a more detailed understanding of the generational characteristics of student cohorts, their epistemological beliefs and conceptions of learning, as well as their learning styles and preferences is advocated.

Source: ” The Pedagogical Challenges Facing French Business Schools in the Implementation of E-learning Initiatives; 2006 ”

The quote above might as well apply to any typical B-school across the globe. I am not here for a name-dropping but I experienced a similar pedagogical (or should I say, andragogical?) challenge in one of our most visible and illustrious B-schools, Indian Institute of Management- Calcutta! The vision statement of the premier B-school reads its aspiration to be a truly centre of excellence in all aspects of management education. The past records of its academic excellence and the cognitive prowess of its alumni would most certainly vouch for the high ground it claims. There are sizable number of  Indra Nooyis of the world who would proudly flaunt their alumni-status from this ivy-league institute. However, history has been unkind to the past successes as a future-guarantor of success.

Coming to the genesis of my writing this blog- I was completing the campus-leg of an executive program in Human Resources at the premier B-school last week and almost all the faculty unmistakably but unintentionally passed on to me (and I would make a safe bet that to many other fellow learners) the same very notion that the educators are possibly uneducated of the learning preferences of adult-learners and the evolving trends and techniques of pedagogy!

In the paragraphs below, I will explain three key adult-learning principles (of Malcolm Knowles fame) that were being ignored and what possibly could have been done,

1. Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences-Among 100 odd learners, we would’ve grossed an experience-base of 1000-odd years if not more, I’d guess. Relying on power-point presentations could have been expected of any bottom-rated institutions and I felt much to be desired from the faculty of IIM-C! Instead, if the materials were sent well in advance and different work-streams were formed to debate the issues then a deeper and long-lasting learning would have been ensured.The biggest spin-off could have been the wealth of tacit knowledge and know-how flowing far and across the class. Flipped-classroom could have been an excellent choice wherein these educators would have shone up as great facilitators of knowledge and experience.
2. Adults are relevancy oriented-  Adult-learners are selective about the content that they think would benefit them through application. Any learning practitioner would do well to prepare him/ herself to moderate and tune up the contents that have the highest probability of getting applied in day-to-day life. One such important topic was about Balanced-Scorecard (BSC) and the faculty was evidently a researcher of the subject but what snapped the interest-levels of many a learner was the fact that almost 95% of his time was consumed in explaining the theoretical framework of BSC thus leaving a very negligible time for review of real cases of BSC applications, examples and more importantly the practitioners’ challenges with the tools. Executives are primarily interested in experience-sharing, gathering knowledge and information about the ways to effective implementation and measuring the impact of their learning efforts. A case-based approach would have benefited the most.
3. Adults are internally motivated and self-directed- These executives who had spared resources to be back to the class didn’t need any extrinsic motivation, instead they looked for opportunities that would have improved their learning curve and equipped them to deal with real-world challenges.The fact that these learners were mostly the millennial and hence, technology played a key part in their lives. Modern collaboration tools such as micro-blogging ( a twitter back-channel discussion for example), QR-codes etc. would have proved to be more engaging and fulfilling for most of them. These techniques would have made the learners engage with the content in the best way possible and the peer-learning more permanent. When will we see these premier B-schools and their academicians keeping pace with the industry and practitioners?

It was with an intent to scribe a running commentary on the practices in the most illustrious of B-schools, I wrote the above and not to show anyone down. When  the world looks up to the academic might of these institutes with an awe, it’s time for our educators re-skilled and kept pace with the changing time and practices notwithstanding the fact that Knowles wrote these principles many decades back. Only then these pantheons of knowledge can claim to be the true catalyst churning out leaders capable of innovation, managing change and transformation in real-sense in this VUCA world.

It’s time to re-skill our educators!

Please share your experience with going back to the school and build a meaningful conversation around the pressing theme.

Use-cases of QR-codes for Quick & Quality Learning!

QR Codes or Quick-Reference Codes are almost ubiquitous!These black fuzzy squares are to be seen right from a pack of cereal at the breakfast table to the back of a bedside read of your favorite novel and on myriad of things that you use through the day. These two-dimensional bar codes were invented by Denso for the car maker Toyota to track automobile components during manufacturing. Later they found their most prolific and successful users in marketing departments.

As a learning professional, I was always fascinated by the immense creative potential QR codes hold in as many creative ways as we possibly could imagine! These 4000-character containing codes are being experimented with by learning professionals in variety of ways. I’ll delve into two distinct phases of learning cycle where my participants found QR codes very exciting and engaging.

Recently during a workshop on ‘Value-based Negotiation’, I successfully incorporated QR codes on two important stages- Delivery of training & Learning sustainability. The workshop being effectively balanced between theories and practice sessions, employed different sets of posters on concepts and frameworks containing QR-codes which directed participants to either a website (for further reading), a short video (building up of a discussion around a theme) or other downloadable resources for real-time uses. Participants have long been exposed to corporate and other learning videos and they served well the purpose, however, these are mostly passive way of engagement with the learning materials. Contrast this with a QR-code that leads to a short video clip of say, 2-3 minutes and then getting the participants debate and discuss the content- you suddenly have a bunch of eager and engaged learners thanks primarily the fact that the learners are in command of the learning instructions- scanning, viewing,storing (most of them do) and debating.

Today’s learners have grown on smart phones and other social media tools and for them such experiments are native and the pedagogy in-sync with the current trends and practices! Learners accessed further readings and real-life tools and templates through such posters and for them it meant being in control and possession of such reference materials for just-in-time use besides a higher degree of engagement with these learning materials. Most of the participants were seen to be book-marking such web-pages for future review and reference!

The second most crucial use-case happened while using such QR-codes for learning sustainability. Over a period of 6-8 weeks after the class, key tools from the workshop were converted into QR-codes and were pasted on various locations in the office (pantry, near common-space, besides the print-stations) and the learners were encouraged to go and scan them to receive further references, some best-used field cases around the application of learning. Unlike other formal platform for driving learning sustenance such as webinars, tele-coaching sessions this QR codes could bypass the element of a formal learning rigor making the whole exercise more learner-centric and informal (remember, adults learn best such pieces which they perceive to be of real-life use and where they are in command of learning). For field-based employees, such QR-codes were sent over mail or WhatsApp groups where they scanned the materials and saved tools for real-time use. They were also trained on how to generate QR-codes so that some of them could share their success stories among the peers and the learning department. In all of these, the participants were on the driver’s seat so that the learning is more engaging and enabling- the holy grail of any learning intervention.

In summary, I can look at the experiments on the following success parameters,

• Higher order engagement among the learners and most evidently, with the learning resources and materials- probabilities are much higher for deeper and immersive learning outcomes
• The young workforce receive these tools of pedagogy to be more native and and extension of their self- these are the learners fed on the staple diet of Apples & Blackberrys!
• On a more socially responsible note, we could save many trees for we could do away with loads of prints- call it, Green learning!

These two use-cases of QR codes at workplace learning are just among the many more creative uses and experiments by fellow learning professionals. I’d be interested to listen to your tryst with QR-codes in various learning set-up. These exchanges are what learning communities are made of.

I am listening!

Negotiations: It’s all about principles!

Often you might hear people saying ‘Win that negotiation! It’s extremely critical for our business’ and similar stories unfold…

Is negotiation then all about winning?

In a recent interview to The Forbes magazine, Prof. William Ury of Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation (PON) says, “Most negotiations take place in the context of long-term relationships, as in a marriage. If you are always asking: “Who’s winning this marriage?”, the marriage is in serious trouble. Focus on your interests- short-term and long-term. It may be instructive to remember the Chinese billionaire who made his fortune by always giving his business partners a little more than he took for himself; everyone wanted to be his partner and they made him rich!”

Profoundly, insightful- Isn’t it? Negotiation is a a collaborative process to further win-win outcomes for all involved and hence, it’s ‘value-driven’, ‘values-driven’ and ‘principle-driven’!

Value-based Negotiation then, is all about creating and claiming ‘value’ through collaborative process where focus is on these four pillars,

• People- Separate people from the issues. This is aptly summarized in Prof. Ury’s words as “We’re negotiating with human beings, not computers. So often, we are trying to solve a problem and the people — their emotions, their ego — get in the way. The first challenge in negotiation is to disentangle the people (or psychological dimension) from the problem (or substantive dimension). Be soft on the person, hard on the problem”.
• Interests- Focusing on interests rather than position will provide for creative solutions to the given issue. This will help empathize with the other side and chances are better that they are more committed to the agreed outcomes rather than renegading. This will prevent us from the headaches of positional-bargaining which mostly turn out to be win-lose affair
• Options- Inventing multiple options for contemplating action is anyway a better idea than being stifled with a single point agenda. How creatively and collaboratively parties engage in negotiation process separates effective negotiations from not-so effective ones. In negotiation arena, often it’s said that- One is fixated, two is a dilemma; It’s three where solutions start emerging!
• Criteria- Basing your negotiation actions and decisions on some objective and rational criteria will save from heart-breaks. This will be viewed as impartial, fair and transparent by all the parties. ‘Yield to principles and not pressure’ is a great dictum in negotiations.

When you combine these tenets of principled-negotiation with the practice of value-creation & value-claiming you get ‘Value-based Negotiation’– a model of negotiation that has the potential to rewrite your negotiation paradigms and practices!

To know more about ‘Value-based Negotiation’ and how it can benefit you and your teams be more pragmatic and effective in everyday negotiations and conflict resolution, please click the link here and visit the page-https://www.facebook.com/ValueBasedNegotiation