Elevate Team Problem-Solving Skills: The Power of Coaching Questions

This article is written for you if you spend your day doing other people’s tasks at the expense of your own.  

✅ Empower your team with the GROW model 

Enable your team to solve their OWN problems using this 4-step problem-solving model. Not only does this take work off your plate, but it empowers them as contributors.  

GOAL: Where are we trying to get to? What problem needs solving or decision making? 

REALITY: What is our current reality? Where are we now? Understand what’s happened so far. 

OPTIONS: What are our options to get there? Throw them all on the table. 

WAY FORWARD: What are the pros and cons of those options? Come to a consensus on the best way forward. What will you / they do? 

As managers it’s very easy to jump straight from GOAL (where do we need to get to?) to WAY FORWARD (here’s what to do). We give out solutions like smarties. It’s quick and easy and gets us back to our own work. Drawback is that next time there’s a problem they come back to us for the answer. 

This model invites the other person to think for themselves… and that’s a great first step to coming to a solution. It can be used in many conversations, including quick ‘corridor conversations’ or ‘coaching in the moment’.  (We don’t have to be executive coaches to use coaching skills as leaders!)

Questions to help identify the GOAL: 

1. What’s the issue you/we are trying to resolve? 

2. What do you/we want to achieve from this conversation?

3. How will you / we know you’ve got there?

4. Why is this important at the moment? 

5. What would be the benefits of achieving this goal? 

Questions to help agree on the current REALITY: 

1. What is happening now (what, who, when, and how often?) 

2. What’s the impact or result of this - on us, colleagues, clients?

3. What factors/people do we need to consider? 

4. What’s already been tried? 

5. How would you and others describe your response to the situation? 

Questions to weigh up the pros and cons of different OPTIONS: 

1. What are our options here? 

2. What are the pros and cons of these options? 

3. If you tried option A and it didn’t work, what could you do then?

4. What have you done successfully in similar situations in the past? 

5. Who else might be able to help? 

Questions to help agree on the WAY FORWARD: 

1. What will you do? What is the plan of action? 

2. What could get in the way? How can you reduce these barriers? 

3. What support do you need? How and when will you enlist that support?

4. On a scale of 1-10 how confident are you that this will resolve the issue? 

5. What would it take to increase that score? 

Questions to think about: 

• How easy did you find this? 

• How often do you jump straight to giving the solution, eg WAY FORWARD 

• How often do you ask closed questions (‘Have you thought of?’ ‘Would it work if….’  ‘Could you…?’ rather than getting them to think of the answer themselves.) 

Other coaching questions to encourage our team to think 

In his excellent book ‘The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way you  Lead Forever’, Michael Bungay Stanier recommends 7 questions a manager can use: 

• What’s on your mind

• And what else?  (because there’s always more) 

• What’s the real challenge here for you? 

• What do you want? 

• How can I help? (manager’s desire to help can sometimes be disempowering; also keeps you curious and lazy and avoids jumping in to fix things) 

• If you’re saying ‘yes’ to this, what are you saying ‘no’ to? 

• What was most useful for you?  

Have you tried any of these? How did you get on?
 

If you’re interested in developing coaching skills for yourself and/or other leaders in your organisation, do get in touch or take a look at the effective leadership training courses we offer.

Kate Jennings