• ‘Open’ questions.
• Posing questions in a way that the other person feels able to answer them fully and freely.
• Asking appropriate questions at the appropriate times.

What Helpful Questions Do:

• Provoke constructive thoughts.
• Help the other person identify and challenge assumptions.

What Unhelpful Questions Do:

• Trap the other person into limited answers
• Make the other person feel defensive (questions beginning with “why”)

There are several tools available which may help you to develop good questioning technique. One of these is to consider the four directions of questions helping the other person to look at the issue from all four angles.

Promoting Good Listening Skills

Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. It is important to firstly develop yourself as a good listener, and to secondly teach your peer to do the same. How well you and your peer listens has a major impact on their life skills, and on the quality of their relationships with others.

• We listen to obtain information.
• We listen to understand.
• We listen for enjoyment.
• We listen to learn.

The Three Levels of Listening

• Hearing: We need to remember that hearing doesn’t mean listening, it’s just a physical act of receiving sound stimulation and sending it to the brain for reception.
• Listening: Is tuning into a sound, recognizing its importance and interpreting the information in the brain.
• Attention: Your coachee may be able to hear and listen to sounds and voices, but they also need to be able to do this for a sustained period of time.

Important reminder: 1) Take it slow and build up over few days and 2) Make sure you recap and put together the answers of the previous session. There is no rush!