12 Questions to Ask When Coaching for Health
Leaders and life coaches aren’t the only professionals who can benefit from asking coaching questions. In the healthcare industry, “coaching for health” refers to an evidence-based approach that aims to empower rather than simply inform clients about their physical wellbeing (Rogers & Maini, 2016).
In a clinical context, coaching also tries to:
- Help patients self-motivate by looking at the values that relate to their health;
- Encourage behavioral change, by having clients consider the health-related outcomes of their actions; and
- Facilitate greater mental wellbeing in both practitioners and patients through a more positive relationship.
Coaching for health can also involve frameworks; T-GROW is one example. A variant of the popular GROW model, T-GROW stands for Topic, Goal, Reality, Options, and What Next. Example questions include (Coachingforhealth.org, 2019):
- What is your focus for today? (Topic)
- What is it you’d like to get from our conversation? (Topic)
- What matters the most to you regarding this? (Goal)
- What do you imagine it would look like if you could accomplish this? (Goal)
- Describe the existing situation… (Reality)
- What do you think you will need to do? (Reality)
- Have you successfully handled a similar situation before? (Reality)
- What might your family or friends suggest that you do? (Options)
- What can you control about this situation? (Options)
- What advice would you give someone else in a similar situation? (Options)
- What’s your next step after today? (What Next)
- How can you keep yourself on track with this? (What Next)
Jenny Rogers’ book Coaching for Health: Why it works and how to do it is an excellent potential resource for clinicians wanting to learn more about the practice.
10 Questions to Ask as a Job or Career Coach
Career coaching questions are similar in some respects to life coaching questions and different in others. Whereas life coaching questions can be related to a range of domains: emotions, relationships, health, family, or similar, career coaching is focused on job-related ambitions, looking at aspects such as performance, skills, future direction, and professional aspirations, among others.
Regardless, career coaches are still required to help foster self-awareness in their coachees – the accountability still rests with the co-worker who is looking for some direction. Similar to life coaching, career coaching will typically involve:
- Setting objectives and determining priorities;
- Developing a positive mindset;
- Challenging unhelpful thought patterns;
- Helping to change unproductive behaviors;
- Strength-spotting; and
- Fostering motivation.
With these in mind, the following questions may be helpful (Lancer et al., 2016).
- What matters the most to you in your professional life? What do you believe passionately in?
- What skills, talents, or competencies do you have that you are most proud of? Which make you the happiest? Which make you feel accomplished?
- What would you love to be able to list on your ideal resume? How about if there were no barriers or boundaries?
- Describe the last time you felt driven and motivated by your role (current or past). What were you doing? Who was around? Where were you?
- When trying to learn a skill you’re passionate about, what are some barriers you’ve faced? How did you overcome these? Which did you need help with?
- What do you feel is preventing you from learning the knowledge you’re after? Have you asked anyone else for help? If so, what happened?
- What is one step you could take to get you closer to that career goal? What kind of development or opportunities might you need to make that step? What opportunities can you create by yourself?
- What can you practically achieve between now and next week/month/quarter to take you closer to your goal?
- How would you go about achieving your career goal if you had unlimited resources? What is already possible right now?
- Have you told others around you about your career goals? Has anyone achieved a similar objective?
As you have probably noticed, there is a similar theme running through these and other coaching questions in other domains. Great coaching is about empowering your client to find the answers themselves, whether that means looking at their professional skills or their whole lives in a different light.
15 Narrative Coaching Questions & Answers to Look Out For
Narrative coaching was developed by Dr. David Drake of the Moment Institute. It is (Drake, 2019):
“...a mindful, experiential, and holistic approach that helps people shift their stories about themselves, others, and life itself to create new possibilities and new results.”
With narrative coaching, a client is invited to become more attuned to the stories they tell themselves and let go of those which are unhelpful. By doing so, they are encouraged to create more useful narratives. Six key principles guide the practice; these include the following:
- That everything a coach needs is right in front of them;
- That they should try to be fully present to reality without judgment;
- Speaking is only valuable when it offers something better than silence;
- The emphasis is on encouraging experiences rather than explanations; and
- That clients should remain actively connected and engaged with whatever they have externalized while they work with it.
The role of the coach is first to help clients become aware of where they are situated in their stories by asking Situate questions such as:
- Describe what you can observe…
- What did you say to yourself or tell yourself at that point?
- What did you then do?
- How did it end?
Next, a coach helps them gain clarity on what they are looking for from the session. This informs how things unfold by establishing a purpose and direction for your time together. This Search phase can include questions such as:
- What is it you want to change, and why?
- What is driving you to do it a different way?
- What would you prefer to have as an alternative ending to this story?
- What would need to change in your perspectives to accomplish that alternative outcome?
The third phase of narrative coaching is called the Shift phase, during which a client readies themselves to leave the old story behind. Because clients come to the coaching session with a question (conscious or subconscious), a coach then helps them experiment with new stories that they want to create.
For example:
- What do you feel is in the way of you making this change?
- What will you need in place to get started?
- What past experiences can you draw from to help you make this pivot?
- What can you do instead of [what you’ve done before]?
Finally, a narrative coach should try to integrate the changes their client has experimented with – creating a new narrative which they can tell themselves the next time a similar situation arises. Sustain phase questions are about making plans and identifying ways to deal with challenges that may occur. They include:
- What obstacles do you feel could come your way?
- How could you work with these challenges and experience your new narrative?
- How will this story support you to change?
You’ll find more on narrative coaching in David Drake’s book Narrative Coaching: The Definitive Guide to Bringing New Stories to Life.
Great Books With Coaching Questions
- The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever – Michael Bungay Stanier (Amazon)
- Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills – Tony Stoltzfus (Amazon)
- An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide – Christian van Nieuwerburgh (Amazon)
- Life Coaching Activities & Powerful Questions – Phyllis Reardon (Amazon)
- Positive Psychology Coaching: Putting the Science of Happiness to Work for Your Clients – Robert Biswas-Diener and Ben Dean (Amazon)
- The Life Coaching Handbook: Everything you need to be an effective life coach – Curly Martin (Amazon)
- Coaching Questions: 101 Coaching Questions for the Coach and the Coaching Client for an Empowering Coaching Session – Randy Wayne (Amazon)
- Coaching For Health: Why It Works And How To Do It – Jenny Rogers and Arti Maini (Amazon)
- Narrative Coaching: Bringing our New Stories to Life – David Drake (Amazon)
For further reading, we share the top Life Coaching Books, as well as the Ultimate Life Coaching Tools Library.
What our readers think
very useful
Very usefull article, i liked it Thank you.
Very useful articles and good questions, it has really helped to make a firm decision on starting my coaching.