FROM COMPLAINING TO SOLVING – 5 COACHING QUESTIONS FOR MANAGERS

Don't come to me with problems, come with solutions

This is the message sent by many managers overwhelmed with a multitude of tasks. Risky, because – let’s be honest – does it really motivate to find a solution? Not really. It rather suggests something like ‘I don’t have time to deal with this, don’t be a slacker and handle it yourself.’

On the other hand, the manager is also human. In our leadership training, managers repeatedly say that they dream of greater independence and proactivity from their subordinates, which would allow them to take a break from handling matters for them.

Paradoxically, many of them respond with immediate help and a proposed solution as soon as an employee reports a problem. All with the best of intentions!

The effect is often that the employee is not at all thrilled with an idea that is not their own (after all, we like our own ideas the most!), which the manager – somewhat rightly – perceives as sheer ingratitude…

So how do you get a subordinate involved in action? How do you provide support without coming up with everything for them? In the article, we present 5 coaching questions useful when we want to engage an employee in co-creating solutions.

5 coaching questions

Why even be inspired by coaching? In short, coaching can be described as a 1:1 conversation during which the coach asks questions, and the client, with the help of these questions, defines the goal they care about, compares available options, and plans steps to achieve it. One of the most important assumptions is that the coach is not the creator of the solution – they only ensure that the client has the widest possible perspective and makes the most thoughtful decisions. However, these are always the client’s decisions – not the coach’s.

The coaching questions mentioned are formulated as open-ended questions and do not suggest answers. They prompt thinking and leave as much decision-making as possible to the client (coaching) or, in our case, the employee. Therefore, they can be a practical tool in the hands of a manager.

What would you like to have instead?

Some people are accustomed to focusing on the problem rather than looking for a solution. When an employee reports a problem to us, detailing the difficulties (- Extracting a complete set of data from the client takes me a lot of time, the client often doesn’t care about providing this information, so I get it in parts, and then I can’t find anything in the fifteen emails exchanged over three months…) we can ask them the question: – So how would you like it to look instead? (-It would be good if there was some kind of form where everything is collected in one place. So that the client responds to everything at once and everything is gathered as a list of questions and answers).

Sometimes a surprised interlocutor will return to describing the problem and the question will need to be repeated (– And what would you like instead of this..?). Here it is worth summarizing the employee’s statement without adding anything to it for now. It might sound something like this: – So you are saying that some kind of form would help you, which the client would fill out at once, and to which you would have easy access.

Once you have X, what will it give you?

Why such a question? Can’t we just jump straight to the solution details? On one hand, it allows you to better visualize the goal and realize the benefits of achieving it, which makes it easier to come up with the details. On the other hand, it checks whether the goal is actually worth investing time and effort to achieve.

In our example, the answer might be something like this: I would have all the information in one place and wouldn’t have to remember which client I already have complete data from for the order and which I don’t. I would have less on my mind.

What could you/we do to achieve X?

Attention. At this stage, a solution begins to emerge, and if we are a manager and not a professional coach, it is natural that we will have our own ideas and proposals for solutions. We can propose them, but remember that the higher the percentage of employee authorship in the idea, the more they will feel ownership of the project.

It is worth praising good ideas (- Good idea to send the form automatically! – You’re right, it’s worth asking the quality department if they would like to add any questions to the form).

In a professional coaching process, the coach would work with the client at this stage to plan the next steps that should be taken to achieve the goal. Each step would be written down by the client, for example, on a sticky note and arranged in order on a timeline.

Also, in a conversation with an employee on more complex topics, it is worth writing down the next steps and having them in front of you while developing an action plan.

Is there any risk that might arise? What will we do if it arises? What can we do to avoid it?

The initial plan that was created needs to be refined. Usually, after identifying potential risks, we modify the original plan or add a plan B – in case any risk actually materializes. In our example, an employee might realize: – Hmm, if I replace phone calls with a form, clients might feel impersonal treatment… plus if the form is long, it might turn out that they won’t want to fill it out!

It is worth considering together how to manage the situation to retain the benefit (information collected at one time, easily accessible in one place) while minimizing the risk (the client feels left alone with a lengthy document).

What should be the first step? What would you need to accomplish it?

We often feel that some task is overwhelming until we plan the first step of its execution. Then suddenly it turns out that the whole topic becomes more approachable, and the subsequent steps less difficult. This is because we often imagine all the actions at once and this vision overwhelms us with the amount of work.

Similarly, an employee might feel this way at the final stage of planning. But we don’t do everything simultaneously; we do it step by step, in stages. The last question therefore allows for a smooth transition to action.