Competency 7. Evokes Awareness

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Communicating Effectively Domain,

Competency 7. Evokes Awareness

Introduction

The second of the two competencies concerned with the effective communication of the coach is Evokes Awareness. The competency and job analysis process identified and analyzed certain “kernels” that emerged as highly effective characteristics in the coaching process. These included:

•        The client being open to change or learning.

•        The coach listens to the client.

•        The coach utilizes appropriate coaching methods and approaches to cause the client to shift.

Competency 7: Evokes Awareness

Definition: Facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor, or analogy.

1.      Considers client experience when deciding what might be most useful.

2.      Challenges the client as a way to evoke awareness or insight.

3.      Asks questions about the client, such as their way of thinking, values, needs, wants, and beliefs.

4.      Asks questions that help the client explore beyond current thinking.

5.      Invites the client to share more about their experience in the moment.

6.      Notices about what is working to enhance client progress.

7.      Adjusts the coaching approach in response to the client’s needs.

8.      Helps the client identify factors that influence current and future patterns of behavior, thinking, or emotion.

9.      Invites the client to generate ideas about how they can move forward and what they are willing or able to do.

10.   Supports the client in reframing perspectives.

11.   Shares observations, insights, and feelings, without attachment, that have the potential to create new learning for the client.

(ICF, 2019b)

 The key elements of this competency are that the coach:

•        Asks to elicit new insights.

•        Shares observations to support new learning • Supports the client in reflection and reframing.

What Is a ‘Powerful Question’?

We start by looking at powerful questioning as an important coaching tool that causes the client to shift. Sometimes coaches think that a powerful question is one that “blows the socks off the client” because of its power. To understand what constitutes a powerful question, we point our attention toward the ICF definition of coaching: “Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” (ICF, 2007).

The tool of powerful questioning relates directly to the “thought-provoking” part of this definition. We know that we are typically creatures of habit and that our habits extend to thinking habits as well as behavioral ones. There is a saying of disputed origin: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” and this really underpins the relevance of this tool in coaching. If the client’s current behavioral and thinking habits were working well for them in the situation they have brought into coaching, they probably would not need or want coaching in it. The very fact that they have brought up this topic means that they are most likely experiencing some sort of challenge or complexity around it that would be supported by expanding their thinking, their perspectives, and therefore the choices they feel they have in that situation. This is the function and purpose of this tool; not to “blow the client’s socks off,” but rather to be able to ask clear questions that help the client to explore issues, his/her part in those issues, their behaviors, and how they are being. These questions are intended to help the client to move forward toward his/her desired outcome for the coaching conversation.

There are some common patterns in the effective use of powerful questioning including the focus or types of questions that can be asked, the nature and quality of those questions, and the purpose of powerful questions.

Focus and Type of Questions

Taking the focus or type of questions first, words like evoke, explore, beyond, generate, and reframe are noticeable. Therefore, the types of questions that are powerful are those which challenge the client and their thinking and invite them to go beyond the boundaries and limitations of their habitual thinking habits to explore and discover new ways of considering their situation, issue, or goal. This can be done in several ways; the coach can ask questions about the client’s way of thinking, assumptions beliefs, values, wants, needs, etc. For example: “What choices have you considered so far?” “What is important for you about that?” “What assumptions are you making about this situation?” “What will you consider making a decision?” and “What do you really want?” These expensive questions might also focus on inviting the client to consider new ways of thinking about him/herself and even challenge their current thinking so that they can see the situation from a different angle. In this way, the coach’s questions invite the client to move away from their current “story” and look forward to new and different possibilities. This can be demonstrated by questions such as: “Is that belief really true?” “How could you challenge your view about this?” or “How might you think differently about yourself in this situation?”

Apart from exploring the client’s thinking and how they view themselves, powerful questions can also focus on expanding their awareness around the situation they are bringing into coaching. With these types of questions, the coach is inviting the client to look at the situation from different perspectives. The questions are intended to support the client to reframe the situation to one which is more empowering for them and could be evidenced by questions such as: “If it were 6 months from now and this was resolved what do you notice?”, “What is a different way of looking at this?”, “What do you notice when you put yourself in their shoes?” and “What else?” Finally, it is also important for the coach’s questions to invite the client to direct their attention and thinking toward their goal. Here, the coach is inviting an inquiry into what success might be like and asks the client to imagine their desired future. This may also include working with time by inviting an inquiry that starts from the future and works backward to the present moment. These questions assist the client to create new scenarios and possibilities that would enable and lead to the successful accomplishment of their goal. Examples of these types of questions might be: “How do you want things to be in a year from now?”, “What would the ideal outcome look like for you?”, “What could you change today that will move you closer to that goal?” and the “miracle question”: “What if you had a magic wand, what would you change?” The miracle question can be extremely useful as it directly challenges the limitations imposed by habitual thinking. Sometimes, something is only impossible because of the way we are thinking about it and, once our thinking is unlocked through these powerful questions, so many more options and possibilities become available to us.

As seen above, the focus on the future and what is possible also links closely to the client’s ideal view of self. A question such as: “What if anything were possible?” speaks very much to the concept of the exploration of fantasy life outlined in Chap. 21 and the psychodynamic approach. Boyatzis’s Intentional Change Theory (2008) and the discovery of the “Ideal Self” also reinforce a focus on the benefits of exploring the client’s hopes, dreams, and vision of success to open up the scope for what is possible in the client’s thinking.

Future focus is at the core of the forward-moving philosophy of coaching. Whereas the competency of Listens Actively (see Chap. 11) focuses a great deal on listening to the client and their current view of the world, their situation, and their view of self, the competency of Evokes Awareness is much more about shifting that view into what may be possible. Questions are important for both competencies; however, the intentions and outcomes for each are distinct.

As we discuss these diverse types of questions, we refer back once again to the ICF definition of coaching:

“Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” (ICF, 2007).

By provoking new and expanded thoughts, the coach can support the client to access their innate creativity, something which may have been left dormant or impeded by earlier thinking habits. To that end, the role of the coach goes beyond being someone who asks “powerful” questions to the essential idea of the coach helping the client gain new insights. Once their creativity is unlocked and the client can see more options, possibilities, and choices, their energy can then be more positively directed toward the accomplishment of their goals, leaving them feeling more inspired and fulfilled.

Nature and Quality of Questions

Moving to the nature and quality of the coach’s questions, these are intended to be as clear and concise as possible. Through conciseness, the client can hear and process the question more easily, meaning that their mental energy is being maximized and not distracted by complicated, lengthy questions that take time and energy to understand, let alone process and respond to. This is further supported by the coach’s questions being primarily open-ended, asked one at a time, rather than multiple questions, and at a pace that allows the client time to listen, think, reflect, and respond (remember, this is not a game of table tennis!). The acronym: WAIT (Why am I talking?) is helpful here to remind the coach that their questions are intended to evoke new thought, not interrupt or demonstrate their own performance or agenda and so the philosophy of “less is more” is definitely advocated and the coach is encouraged to take their own time to reflect so that they can carefully consider, formulate and ask their questions in as few words as possible for maximum positive impact for the client.

The quality of the coach’s questions will also be enhanced by using an appropriate mirroring of the client’s language and elements of the client’s learning style and frame of reference. As with many aspects of building connection and rapport that we have already seen in some of the previous competencies, the use of the client’s language allows for mirror neurons to be triggered which, not only nurtures that rapport but creates a level of familiarity for the client, which enables them to connect with and process that language more readily. Questions being clear, concise, and using the client’s language are qualities that Nancy Kline (1999) notes when describing incisive questions which we have covered further in Chap. 16 on the humanistic approach.

The coach is also expected to consider the client’s experience, context, and communication style to understand and notice what is working so that they can then adapt and work with the client’s style. This may be learning by doing, reflecting, experimenting, visualizing, etc. For example, the coach might ask: “You mentioned that you had caught a glimpse of that future, what can you see?”, “How would you like to approach this part of the work?”, “What would you like to do now?” and, “You said you are firing on all cylinders, what is that like?” A final note on the quality of the coach’s questions is that they are not leading and do not contain a conclusion or direction from the coach. This aspect is a clear way of demonstrating the extent to which the coach is keeping to and holding the client’s agenda versus their own and is evidenced by questions such as: “From the options you have outlined, which path do you want to take?”, “What ideas do you have?” and “What conclusions are you drawing from this?”

The Purpose of Powerful Questioning

Ultimately, the purpose of powerful questioning is to support the client to explore new and different thinking that equally opens new and different options, possibilities, and choices, supporting the client to be more empowered to make those choices and take steps toward accomplishing their goal. What is important to remember however is that these questions need to be customized by what we have heard and learned about the client and their situations. Whilst several examples of questions are being suggested within the chapters of this section, we offer a strong caution against thinking about these questions as a list of options. Every coaching conversation is different and unique and the absolute best way to ask a powerful question is to be deeply connected to the client and the conversation; to be fully present, to listen with all the senses, to be intuitive, and ask questions that arise directly from what is being heard and learned in the coaching process. Formulaic coaching is a habit, a thinking and behavioral habit, and is the very thing that we are inviting our clients to do differently.

Metaphor

Now let us consider another significant and useful tool in coaching for evoking awareness: the use of metaphor and/or analogy, which is a way of working with the client’s language to create the relationship, communicate effectively and evoke awareness. One of the roots of this word is: metapherein, which means “to carry over,” i.e., to transfer meaning and metaphor is an important way that we give meaning and structure to what we say. Whilst our speech may be structured, measured and logical, our mind and thoughts are more random, fast, and multifaceted. Language is therefore used to express what is going on inside and metaphor is used to share how we give meaning to our experience. Working with the client’s shared metaphor(s) is a rich way to communicate and engage with the client to understand more deeply what something truly means to them. Imagine the question “How are you?” ...what is evoked if the answer is: “I’m on Cloud 9” or “I feel like I’m trapped in a dark cave, and I can’t find my way out”? These metaphors and symbolic language offer an opportunity to draw upon great coaching skills and inquire about the client’s use of language and what it means for them, all customized by what we have heard through the deep presence and listening.

 

Silence

Silence is also noted as a really useful way to evoke awareness and once again, the interrelatedness of the competencies is evident. The coach’s ability to allow silence and space, to pause for reflection, consideration and meaning-making, offers a powerful opportunity for the expansion of the client’s awareness. As such, silence is also highlighted and covered more fully in Chap. 10, competency 5: Maintains Presence.

Finding Potential

Another aspect of this competency is the extent to which the coach’s questions, intuitions, and observations have the potential to create new learning for their client. The key word here is potential to create...a coach cannot guarantee that the client will take learning, however, the role of the coach in this competency is to offer contributions that have the potential for this learning to be evoked. Indeed, this is one of the places in coaching where the coach may in fact offer occasional mentoring or consultancy-type interventions by sharing their own ideas to evoke insight and forward movement (and always in service of the client’s agenda as opposed to indulging the agenda or ego of the coach). For example, “May I share my perspective on this? Please let me know if it is helpful or if you disagree,” “I think of you as a highly creative thinker, what happens when you think of yourself that way too?” or “You appear to be limiting your options here, what do you think?”

Offering Perspectives

Part of this activity may include the coach sharing observations, insights, and feelings, without attachment, that have the potential to create new learning for the client. The idea of coaches giving advice is always a controversial topic. We know from years of anecdotal evidence and listening to recordings of coaching sessions that many coaches do this—and frequently with positive results. Evidence of this was seen at all stages of the competency and job analysis process and two important criteria have been identified:

1.      It is acceptable to share observations, insights, or feelings with clients after getting permission to do so as long as there is no attachment to it.

2.      The sharing must broaden (rather than narrow) the range of options or view for the client.

Therefore, such interventions by the coach are expected to be in service of the client’s forward movement or learning—not the coach’s agenda. This means that the interventions seek to expand and explore the client’s thinking; potentially challenge the client’s thinking and support the client to have new and diverse ways of considering and interacting with their issue. This type of intervention means that the coach is described as being “unattached” to their offering and is communicating in a way that enables self-discovery for the client as opposed to the coach telling the client based on the coach holding a sense of being right or “knowing” what the client needs. Such unattached observations, intuitions, comments, thoughts, and feelings might be something like: “It sounds like you are much more satisfied with that solution,” “I am hearing disappointment, is that right?” or “My intuition is telling me there’s still something missing for you, how are you feeling about it?”

Conclusion

This competency is pivotal to the changes the client makes in their thinking, feeling, and behavior, which ultimately leads them closer to their goals and desired outcomes. The process of evoking awareness includes careful questioning, probing, and exploration as well as the well-placed offering of perspectives and observations from the coach that are in service of the client’s learning and forward movement. The effective coach notices what is working in the coaching process and adapts to work ‘in step’ with their client, which can include working with metaphor and silence in order to elicit the client’s full potential for growth and development.

Summary

Chapter 12, Communication Skills and Competencies, Chapter 12, is entitled "Coaching Effectively: The Key Elements of Effective Communication". The second competency concerned with effective communication is "Evokes Awareness". The competency and job analysis process identified certain "kernels" that emerged as highly effective characteristics in the coaching process. The key elements of this competency are that the coach asks to elicit new insights, shares observations to support new learning, and supports the client in reflection and reframing. The purpose of powerful questioning is to support the client to exploring new and different thinking that equally opens up new options, possibilities, and choices, supporting the client to be more empowered to make those choices and take steps toward accomplishing their goal-accomplishing their goal