This is The Coaching In, a podcast from 3D Coaching. So welcome to this week's podcast. My name's Claire Pedrick. I'm a master certified coach with the ICF. And today I am in conversation with my colleague, Paranelle Barnes, because we keep thinking together about challenging questions and we thought it would make a great podcast. Paranelle, just give us a one line introduction to you. Hello, Claire. Thank you.
I realized that my coaching practice needs to be continually refined, continually stretched. And as you've just said, challenging questions is one of the things which I trip over. So I am excited to find out how I can trip less. So what's your question about challenging questions? My question, I think has actually two sections to it. I suspect that when my brain asks challenging questions, they're quite well formed.
When my heart asks challenging questions, they're not so well formed and I'm bold. whereas when the brain goes into action... I might not be quite so brave. How interesting. I noticed that's all about the sending of the question. I'm wondering about how they arrive. Yes. And... Generally, the feedback I get is that they arrive without as much challenge in them as I expect. Isn't that interesting? Because I think it's much harder to ask a challenging question than we think it is.
And I also think that the more we try and make it challenging, the longer the time gap between when we saw or heard or sensed something. and when it arrives. Could you repeat that, please? Just for the benefit of people who listening to the podcast, the silence here is that there's lots of thinking going on. So I think what I said was, you take ages to... So great questions, right, come from what we see or hear or sense.
So if we are forming a challenging question based on what we see or hear or sense with our brain, then it takes time to form. And whether that's half a second or three seconds, there is a time delay. between what we see or hear or sense and when what we say arrives in the ears of the thinker. Now I've got it. How does that play into a comment you've made in the masterclasses about timing of a question or a response?
I think that the closer the intervention from us is to what we saw or heard or sensed, the more challenging it is and the more powerful it is. Because if you think at the speed at which we process stuff is is super fast. So if the person who is being coached, if the thinker is moving forward at a pace, yes. We're hugely at risk of keeping on pulling them back to where they were because they get ahead of us.
So. So there's something about challenging questions are really, really timely and the words or the gesture is very close to the thing that we saw. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. I like the fact that it could be words or gesture. Well, you know me, I don't like questions that have words in because they're too complicated. What do you mean by that? So I...
Well this is really difficult to demonstrate on an audio podcast but I can remember working with a group in Bath and the guy said he said the thing that I want to think about is so massive that I just don't know what to do with it and at the same time he's saying it was massive he held his fingers out in a measurement and the gap between his thumb and his forefinger was about two centimetres. So he's saying it's just enormous. And then you get this two centimetre thing being held by his hand.
So all I did was make the gesture back to him that he'd made. So you mirrored. I mirrored exactly his gesture. And he went, yeah, it's not really big at all, is it? And then suddenly it was unlocked and then off we went on the stuff that needed to be done. So I think, I think timing is everything. So that's why we're going to do that masterclass in a few weeks time about punctuation. It's about silence and it's about pauses and it's about, and it's about keeping up with people.
That sounds interesting. I shall be curious to hear that one. But can I go back to challenging questions? Yeah. How? Other than using the gesture in a timely manner, how else can I make... question so challenging for the thinker but it lands super well. Well, one way is to say anything. well, that puts me out of a job quite like that.
So because I think when I when I watch people having conversations or listen to them having conversations, when the going gets tough and the thinker is is beginning to find it difficult, often the coach will start speaking more. And it's almost as though they're trying to reduce the pain by saying something. So they see the pain emerging and then they say something to reduce it. But what I want to say is that when I've noticed that happening, the pain was never caused by the coach.
The pain was actually caused by the thinker beginning to have an insight that they hadn't had before. So waiting, can be one of the most challenging questions. And I think the other thing is that a challenging question must have a question mark, but it might not need any words in it. I love the fact that waiting, i.e. not speaking, is a challenging question.
Because I'm aware that if you're face to face with somebody, you can raise your eyebrows or tilt your head, and that can be as much of a question as words. Exactly. Should it be needed? Exactly, and I think we underestimate the value of silence and I think we think silence is a bit passive, but actually it isn't passive at all. And if they're thinking and getting insights faster than we are, then let's keep in sync. Because it's not challenging to take them backwards.
and neither is it our role to rush ahead. Indeed. So getting that beautiful balance, that thing that T.S. Eliot says in burnt Norton, neither from nor towards, it's kind of neither ahead nor behind. But to be in sync with someone else enough is quite an art, isn't it? Because you've got to be really paying attention. And that paying attention in silence is not passive, that's active.
Yeah, so that's why I love the idea of active listening and I think actually most active listening is quite passive. know, active listening is really super active because you've got to be noticing on so many levels. You've got to be noticing what you hear, you've got to be noticing what you see, you've got to be noticing what you sense. So challenging questions are easy because they're short and they're timely.
But actually to get to them, I think probably we need to get rid of a whole load of clever questions that come in. Clever questions, very. if I've understood you correctly, are reverse focused rather than forward focused? Or they're based on a question that we've heard asked before or seen somebody ask before. So if I give you an example, I was listening to a coach coaching and the thinker was talking about a conversation that they had to have with somebody else.
And as I was listening, I was noticing that everything that was being said was standing in the shoes of the individual who was being coached and none of it was standing in the shoes of the person who was going to receive the conversation. And the coach asked a great question. She said, who do you need to be in that conversation?
which was a very challenging question except she had interpreted what she saw and heard and sensed and the interpretation then lost the impact because what I saw or heard or sensed was I want this, it needs to be like this for me, I'm going to do this and so the challenging question might have been I want, I need, I will And her? which was a more untranslated version. And that's not very beautiful. It's not very grammatical.
But as soon as we turn it, as soon as we hear or see or say something, I think, and then pick from our stock of questions a question that meets that, we've lost the bit that made the real connection. And we've lost connection with where they are. And that piece about... offering an interpretation. dilutes the question, includes our judgment. can tip the person off course. whereas repeating the words plus a question mark Hmm. You'll have to think on that one. Hmm. That sounds like interesting.
So they're short. Yep. that of the moment. Yeah. They don't have to be words. Absolutely. and require all that I have to be with the thinker. And when you're not trying to form a well-articulated complete sentence question, you have more space in your mind and spirit to notice what you saw or heard or sensed. Hmm Good. As in challenging. Thank you. That's a bit of a taster on challenging questions. It's funny you're... a masterclass on that? Yeah, I'm recording it at the moment.
So it will be live on the website today. So if anyone wants to go, if you go to developing coach, be developed and look for pre-recorded training, you'll find it. Thank you. So thank you, Peranel, for helping me think about challenging questions. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I was talking to Peranel Barnes.