ASK QUESTIONS THAT EMPOWER AND CREATE BUY-IN

coaching principles 12

By Dr Peter Chee and Dr Jack Canfield

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.

– Anthony Robbins

Effective coaches ask questions that empower and create buy-in to establish a strong sense of empowerment. Questions that empower are the ones that raise your coachee’s self-esteem by demonstrating your confidence in their capability and potential. When the questions you ask reflect your interest about their strengths and their passions, what they love about themselves, what others appreciate about them, what makes them happy, their achievements, and the reasons that drive them to succeed, you begin to draw out the best from them. This is what truly empowers them.

When people feel a sense of ownership for the solutions and action steps, they become more motivated to take those actions. Since the people whom we coach also have much more information about themselves and their circumstances than we do, the plans they come up with themselves tend to yield better results than those we might create for them.

People are much more committed and energized to carry out the ideas and plans that they are responsible for having developed. When people are told what to do, if they are not part of that decision, they give up more easily or resist change.

Here are some examples of empowering and buy-in questions you can use in your coaching conversations:

  1. What do people appreciate most about you?
  2. What gives you the greatest motivation to win this challenge?
  3. What story would you like to tell others about your greatest contribution at journey’s end?
  1. What would most effectively get you to your destination?
  2. What makes winning this challenge important to you?
  3. What is your commitment to this goal on a scale of 1 to 10? What will it take to maximize this?

Other ways you can help your coachees develop buy-in on solutions include:

  • Give them the freedom to make their own decisions.
  • Help them to find out what they really want.
  • Help them realize what is most important to them.
  • Help them realize what brings them the most satisfaction and lasting fulfillment.

People often ask coaches to help them make critical decisions, but most of the time they already know what to do. They just need the assurance and confidence to step up and do it. Self-confidence is a key factor in most people’s development.

Imagine the impact you create for the people you coach when you ask questions that empower them and build buy-in, as opposed to simply advising them what to do. As a coach, when you ask people for their views on things that really matter to them, you are sending them an empowering message that says they are capable of coming up with great ideas and that you have faith in their ability to do that.

By asking empowering questions, you can give people the courage to do what they thought they could not. Imagine a world where people feel enthusiastic about their lives and the work they do. As a coach, you will enjoy asking questions that empower and create buy-in, particularly as you see the results unfold before you.


TRANSFORMATIONAL COACHING QUESTIONS

The answers lie in the questions we ask.

– Jack Canfield and Peter Chee

  1. WHAT can you do to make the people you coach feel empowered?
  2. HOW can you create buy-in from the questions you ask?
  3. HOW can you help your coachee find out what they really want?
  4. WHAT can you do to let others discover what is really important to them?
  5. HOW can you help people focus on things that brings satisfaction and fulfilment?

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FURTHER RESOURCES

World #1 Strategic Innovation Coach and World #3 Coaching Guru Dr Peter Chee

Coaching for Breakthrough Success combines time-tested principles of exemplary coaches with the latest disruptive techniques used by the world’s top performing leaders, this step-by-step playbook shows you how to nurture—in yourself and others—the three essential requirements of coaching excellence