This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Hello there, it's Claire here. This Coaching Inn is a book group and we're thinking about chapter four. In the UK this week, been a public holiday and so we've had some fewer comments this week, but there's also some new learning to share with you about simple questions.
Mark, I love that you say that many of the insights from this chapter emerge in the listening chapter and I absolutely agree with you because I think that great questions come from what we notice. They come from what we see or hear or sense and the only purpose of them is that they move the thinker forward in their thinking and it's so risky. to start asking questions that we like.
One of the things that I notice as people move from being beginner coaches to being master coaches, I suppose you could say, is that actually at master coach level, the questions are far less impressive and far shorter and the coach asks only as much. as they need to ask in service of the other person moving forward. So actually the best measure of the quality of questions is the impact it has on the thinker and that's why noticing and asking questions are inextricably linked.
In fact it's so important that we run a practicum which is training in noticing because until we notice well it's really difficult to ask high quality questions. And high quality questions have a sell by date and can often not be repeated. Some of the things that I've been learning since I finished the book, one is about questions being more about the tone or the question mark than they are about the words that we say. So if you say, Let me think of an example.
If you say, so it's about empathy, that's an offer that they take up and continue to think about. Whereas if you say, so it's about empathy, that's a statement tone and it leaves the responsibility with you. So great questions. Give the flow back to the thinker. And my revelation this morning is that when somebody is in flow in their thinking, which is when the questions are really serving them and moving them forward, they are not fluent in the way they use language.
So internal flow, flow of thinking from questions is produces what I'm doing now, which is hesitant thinking in the moment, wondering kind of language. And when the thinker responds to questions in a once upon a time, I had an answer to your question and the answer to my question was this and this and this and this and this, that's actually probably not giving them insights. It's just giving them, it's them duly diligently answering the question.
So, Susan noticed that every word you speak I said is using a piece of the time we have together. I can remember working with a coach years and years ago and he talked a lot, a lot, a lot and he asked really long questions and I said to him how much is this person paying you for coaching? And then we worked out how much each word was costing them and checking about whether that was value for money.
Mark liked the fact that the the Rilke quote about living the question now and sometimes just sitting with the questions and staying with them is the most powerful thing. Then Mark had a question and he said what's the place of outcome based questions? Questions like what do you want? What do you want to create? How do you want? What do you want to have happen? Mark I think those are amazing questions. Maybe they need to be in book two. Maybe we need to write it together.
They aren't emphasised because you can only put as much as you can put in a book. And what I wanted to say in simplifying coaching was that it's the foundation of the co-creation of the conversation that's the most important thing. Because when you have a great basis and a great foundation, then you can put small amounts of other stuff on top.
But of course, you're absolutely right, Mark, because if you're having a future focused conversation, outcome based questions are based in the future and begin with the end in mind, as Covey would say, and they're great. So I like your questions very much. So that's all for this week, because it's been a quiet week and also I'm only working for three days this week.
So next week the chapter that we're going to be thinking about is chapter five which is about simple exploring and of course that's where we create awareness. So see you next week and I think Ruth said that there's a couple of places left on the practicum where you can practice noticing starting on the 14th of June and you can find out more details on the website. Thanks for listening, bye.
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