Let Me Do a Rewind

More and more, senior leaders want to develop a coaching leadership style. They realize that in this day and age, it isn’t feasible to supply solutions for everyone else’s challenges. Furthermore, motivated employees want to be empowered and given opportunities to create real and significant impact, not just follow instructions.

The coaching leadership style requires that leaders develop new ways of communicating. In particular, they must broaden beyond yes/no questioning. One of the core techniques in my coaching toolkit enables leaders to ask provocative open questions that catalyze new thought. It is very straight forward, and very effective:

• If you start your question with words like: could, did, have, can, might, is, and do, you KNOW already that it will be a closed, yes/no question
• If you start your question with words like: what, how, where, or why, you are much more likely to ignite some new thought in the other person.

We have noticed that as leaders in our ‘Coaching is an Art’ program practice with their coachees (who they work with for nine months!), they quite easily and often slip back into the bad habit of asking yes/no question. For example:

“Have you tried to XYZ?”  (a yes/no question that is actually giving advice)

“Did you think of ABC?”    (a yes/no question that could suggest perceived superiority)

“Could you just DEF?”       (a yes/no question that suggests a solution and makes it sound                                                easy to implement; it could be easy for the one asking, but not                                                  for the one answering)

When these leaders catch themselves by noticing the first word in their question, I encourage them to do a ‘rewind’ right in front of their coachee, and, to make it clear that they are doing so. It could go something like this. They stop mid-sentence and say:

“Hang on, let me say it differently.” Or

“I’m going to do a rewind here.” Or

“Wait – I need a moment to (re)formulate my question.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that rewinding in real time often requires that the coach develop a stronger self-listening muscle. For good reason, coaches tend to focus more of their listening on what their coachee is saying; yet they must not forget that it is only by self-listening – and rewinding as necessary – that they will learn to formulate provocative open questions consistently.

Rewinding can have a number of positive benefits:

• The coach switches from a closed to an open question – stimulating more (new) thought from their coachee.
• Instead of their coachee being limited to answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they can choose from an infinite number of possible answers.
• The coach demonstrates the desire to craft a quality question to make the conversation worthwhile for the coachee.
• The coach models to the coachee how to choose words with intention, by listening closely to themselves speak and self-correcting in real-time.
• In self-correcting, the coach demonstrates a level of vulnerability (and hopefully, a comfort in doing so), which can suggest a shoulder-to-shoulder non-hierarchal peer relationship (nobody’s perfect).

So, whether you are consciously trying to develop a coaching leadership style, or simply  aiming to catalyze someone’s own creativity, take care when choosing the first word of the question you are about to ask.

Oh, and one more thing: Have you thought about keeping a ‘before’ and ‘after’ list of the questions you rewind?

Whoops – rewind!!

What could you do to lock in the learning of each of your rewinds?