As we know by now, questions are a key part of a coach’s toolkit. With questions, coach and coachee can work together to explore the topic and reach valuable outcomes. Without them, it is hard to give a session a specific direction.

This begs two questions: what is the structure of a coaching session, and what are the most useful questions to ask at each stage? Let’s explore both.

How are coaching sessions structured?

Type “coaching session structure” into Google images and you will see hundreds of options. We aren’t analysing these in detail here – we talk about structuring coaching sessions in our blog about how to start a coaching session.

Let’s take a standard structure. The models we use and teach on our programmes all have these four elements: an opening to establish the topic for today’s session; starting the exploration, to uncover information and feelings about the topic; deepening the exploration, to raise awareness and move towards actions; and closing, for insights and actions.

For each of these four stages, there are useful questions to ask. The opening and closing tend to draw on a narrower range of questions than the middle two. Read on for the detail.

Questions at the opening stage

Before working out the specific questions, it helps to think about the purpose of this stage in a bit more detail. The opening is clearly there to establish the topic, but also to find out which aspect of it is to be explored, and to uncover what outcomes the coachee is looking for. It can even be used for some early awareness raising. Some good questions include:

• What topic do you want to work on today?
• What outcome are you looking for?
• What will achieving this outcome give you?
• Why now for this topic?
• What feelings do you have about this?

All of these help to establish the background and foundations without exploring the issue itself in depth. After asking these, you are well set to move on.

if you want to go deeper on this, see our post on how to start a coaching conversation.

Starting the exploration

Now we want the coachee to talk about the topic — to put some flesh on the bones and start uncovering what is important about it. Apart from the first “tell me about” question, there are very few questions we can say with certainty we will ask each time. So the list below is a flavour of the types of questions that may be useful:

• Tell me about this topic.
• What is important about it?
• What excites or frustrates you about it?
• What do you notice about yourself in relation to this?
• What steps have you taken so far?

You will see that we are holding back from pushing towards solutions at this stage. The intention is to explore, to scrabble around a bit, and to let whatever needs to come out, emerge.

Deepening the exploration

As we have no specific topic to use as our example, these questions are generic, but they give a sense of the types of question to ask at this point:

• What patterns are you seeing in what you’ve been saying so far?
• What changes may need to happen from you?
• What strengths do you have to move this forward?
• What barriers are you identifying?
• How clear are you on the outcome you were looking for?

And of course there may be many other questions to draw on, based on the specifics of what the coachee has said.

Ending the session

This is the part the skilled coach holds back from until the latter part of the conversation. Questions here fall into two categories: coachee self-reflection and coachee actions. Typical questions include:

• What have you learnt about yourself from talking this through?
• What is important about that?
• What steps will you take now?
• What obstacles to those steps might you face?
• What is your level of commitment to these actions?

These and similar questions bring the session to a productive close, allowing the coachee to walk away with clear actions and new realisations.

Now I have my list of questions — what do I do with them?

It is useful to have a list of questions to refer to, and helpful to be able to see which work well at each stage. Three suggestions:

Use these lists lightly and avoid being formulaic. These are a sample of question types rather than a definitive list to work through. Asking one question often gets you the answer to two others on the list.

Find alternatives and synonyms. The aim of offering these lists is to give a flavour of the question types at each stage, not to hand you a script. Use them as a basis to work out alternatives that feel natural to you.

Use this alongside other questioning approaches. If you have been following these blogs in order, you will have read the blog about QAQA questions. More blogs about questions are coming.

Today’s blog is a two for one. As well as mapping out some good questions, it reveals what a solid session structure looks like. Good coaches are mindful of asking the questions that are most useful at each stage, taking the coachee through the experience in a way that serves their development. Start building your own list, and notice which questions land most powerfully.

Happy coaching and happy questioning.