REINVENT YOUR FUTURE

4 | Coaching Tips & Truths 

What do you need to pay closer attention to when coaching clients?

— CHAPTER 4 —
Using Appreciative Inquiry When Coaching
A relatively new approach to coaching called Appreciative Inquiry Coaching (AIC) has its roots in Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI evolved in the 1980s as a revolutionary and positive philosophy towards organizational change and is a process that focuses on leveraging an organization’s core strengths rather than seeking to overcome or minimize its weaknesses. Appreciative Inquiry Coaching engages and focuses clients on both the positive present and possible future, rather than on the problems of the
past and present. AI recognizes the best in people or the world around us. It affirms past and present strengths, successes, and potentials. It focuses on health, vitality, excellence, and what’s already present in a situation.
The AIC process is an act of exploration and discovery that, through the use of questions, invites clients
to be open to seeing new potentials and possibilities. AI is regarded as a positive, strengths-based operational approach to change, learning, and development that blends well with other coaching approaches and practices. Two essential components of AI are its five core principles and five (5-D) core processes. These principles and processes are understood to have emerged from theoretical and research foundations, and research on the power of imagery.
The five principles
1. Constructionist Principle (words create worlds). Reality, as we know it, is a subjective vs. objective state and is socially created through language and conversations.
2. Simultaneity Principle (inquiry creates change). The moment we ask a question, we begin to create a change. “The questions we ask are fateful.”
3. Poetic Principle (we can choose what we study). Teams and organizations, like open books, are endless sources of study and learning. What we choose to study makes a difference. It describes— even creates—the world as we know it.
4. Anticipatory Principle (images inspire action). Human systems move in the direction of their images of the future. The more positive and hopeful the image of the future, the more positive the present- day action.
5. Positive Principle (positive questions lead to positive change). Momentum for small or large- scale change requires large amounts of positive affect and social bonding. This momentum is best generated through positive questions that amplify the positive core.
The 5-D Processes (often called steps or stages)
1. Define – What is the topic of inquiry? It is important to define the overall focus of the inquiry (what the system wants more of). Definition is used to clarify the area of work to be considered. In spite of being the starting point of the cycle, it’s a recent addition—the 5Ds were originally the 4Ds, including discover, dream, design, and destiny. Definition defines the project’s purpose, content, and what needs to be achieved. In this phase, the guiding question is, “What generative topic do we want to focus on together?”
2. Discover – Appreciating the best of “what is.” Discovery is based on a dialogue, as a way of finding ‘what works’. It rediscovers and remembers the organization or community’s successes, strengths, and periods of excellence.
3. Dream – Imagining “what could be.” Imagining uses past achievements and successes identified in the discovery phase to imagine new possibilities and envisage a preferred future. It allows people to identify their dreams for a community or organization, having discovered “what is best.” They have the chance to project it into their wishes, hopes, and aspirations for the future
4. Design – Determining “what should be.” Design brings together the stories from discovery with the imagination and creativity from dream. We call it bringing the ‘best of what is’ together with ‘what might be’, to create ‘what should be – the ideal’.
5. Deliver/Destiny/Do – Creating “what will be.” The fifth stage in the 5Ds process identifies how the design is delivered, and how it’s embedded into groups, communities, and organizations. In early appreciative inquiry development, it was called “delivery,” based on more traditional organizational development practice. The term “destiny” is more prevalent now. Vibrant Faith frequently uses the phrase “DO what matters every day” to describe this stage.
Replace standard questions with AI-oriented questions (samples below)
• Instead of “Tell me what the problem is.” ask, “What gives you energy?”
• Instead of “Tell me what’s wrong.” ask, “What do you most value about yourself?”
• Instead of “What are you worried about?” ask, “What do you want more of?”
• Instead of “What do you need help with?” ask, “What worked well for you before?”
• Instead of “What’s bothering you?” ask, “What’s working well now?”
• Instead of “What is and isn’t working?” ask, “What first attracted you to...?”
• Instead of “What are you going to do about...?” ask, “What did you do to contribute?” • Instead of “How are you going to fix this?” ask, “What does it look like when you...?”
Sample DISCOVER Questions
• Describe what you consider stress at work to be. Can you offer a definition, phrase or quote to describe it and provide an example?
• When recently have you displayed the ability to cope with stress at work? What was the situation which required coping behavior?
• What attitude(s) did you adopt at that time? What were you thinking?
• Describe your emotions while you were coping with stress.
• How did you react? What did you do?
Sample DREAM Questions
• Imagine one night while you were asleep a miracle occurred, and when you woke up your coping behavior was just as you’ve described, in all stressful situations. How would you know you were handling stress well?
• What would be different?
• What would have changed in your habits?
• Who would be the first to notice these changes?
• What would they say or do, and how will you respond?
Sample DESIGN Questions
• How will you act differently to make the above work?
• How best can you develop your ability to handle stress?
• Are there “significant others” who you feel play a crucial role in the development of your ability to handle stress?
• What do you think these individuals do to help? What do they not do?
• Are there any techniques or methods that you have experienced which you feel influence your ability to handle stress?
• Think of someone you know who you would characterize as being able to handle stress. How do you think they have developed their ability?
Sample DO Questions
• Reflecting on what you really want and where you are right now regarding coping with stress, what do you see as the most significant changes you could make that would help you get what you want?
• What one small change could you make right now, no matter how small, that would improve your ability to handle stress? The change does not have to be a physical action—it could be a shift in thinking or attitude.
Sample LIFE COACHING Questions
Your History
• Describe your three greatest accomplishments to date.
• What made these accomplishments stand out for you?
• What have you incorporated into your current actions from your past accomplishments?
• How could you use what you’ve learned from these accomplishments to assist you in making future changes?
• What major transitions have you had in the past two years? (For example, new assignment, new residence, new relationship, etc.)
• If you worked with a coach before or a similar one-on-one adult relationship (for example, tennis coach, piano teacher, therapist) what worked well for you?
• If you have worked with a coach, and you are not currently, how did that relationship end?
Your Life
• Who are or have been your major role models?
• What attributes of these role models do you admire and want to emulate?
• What are the five most positive things in your life?
• What are five things you would like to change in your life that would make it even more satisfying, effective, and joyful? (Examples include relationships, information, environment, job.)
• Who are the key supportive people in your life, and what do they provide for you?
• On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being least effective and 10 being most effective), rate the quality of your life.
• By what criteria did you rate yourself? What percentage of the life you are leading is actually YOUR life?
Your Self Today
• List five adjectives that describe you at your best.
• What prevents you from being at your best?
• What energizes you? What saps your energy?
• What are you learning and accepting about yourself at present?
Your Potential
• What is your personal and/or professional vision?
• What would you like to contribute to the world?
• What are you most wanting to achieve in the next three years? • What are you most wanting to achieve in the next six months? • How ready are you to go for it?
Sample CAREER DEVELOPMENT questions
• When you look over your work history, what role did you enjoy the most, and why? • What are your strengths at work—what are you good at?
• What gives you pleasure at work—what do you enjoy doing?
• What gives you meaning at work—what gives you a sense of purpose?
• What do you consider to be your ideal job?
• Where do you see yourself in a year/three to five years/10 years?
• What is it about this career goal that you’re interested in?
• How ready do you think you are for the next step in your career?
• What do you see as your next challenge?
• What do you think you’ll find the most challenging/rewarding aspect of your career goal?
Sample TEAMWORK Questions
• What gives life to our team when it is at its best...?
• What are the qualities of our colleagues that most foster enthusiasm, information sharing, and collaboration towards common goals?
• Describe the best teamwork that you have seen or been part of recently. What was it about that teamwork that caused you to define it as ‘the best’?
• What were the conditions that allowed that winning teamwork to emerge?
• Think of other successful “teams” that also have winning teamwork, teamwork that you admire. What makes that teamwork tick?
• What does that team do that we could try, or learn from, to do better?
ASSIGNMENTS
1 | Describe how often you hear Appreciative Inquiry (AI) questions used in current coaching situations 2 | List ways you could use Appreciative Inquiry (AI) questions more often during meetings. 3 | Describe how your coaching would change if you used Appreciative Inquiry (AI) principles more often.
Over the years, I find that I keep coming back to some of the essential coaching practices and approaches that result in consistently good coaching conversations. These practices help surface the most pressing issues, accelerate the clients progress, keep the primary focus on the client, and bring out God’s best in them. Review the 15 tips found in this chapter and think about which tips are most relevant to increasing your impact as a coach.
Your Life
• Who are or have been your major role models?
• What attributes of these role models do you admire and want to emulate?
• What are the five most positive things in your life?
• What are five things you would like to change in your life that would make it even more satisfying, effective, and joyful? (Examples include relationships, information, environment, job.)
• Who are the key supportive people in your life, and what do they provide for you?
• On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being least effective and 10 being most effective), rate the quality of your life.
• By what criteria did you rate yourself? What percentage of the life you are leading is actually YOUR life?
Your Self Today
• List five adjectives that describe you at your best.
• What prevents you from being at your best?
• What energizes you? What saps your energy?
• What are you learning and accepting about yourself at present?
Your Potential
• What is your personal and/or professional vision?
• What would you like to contribute to the world?
• What are you most wanting to achieve in the next three years? • What are you most wanting to achieve in the next six months? • How ready are you to go for it?
Sample CAREER DEVELOPMENT questions
• When you look over your work history, what role did you enjoy the most, and why? • What are your strengths at work—what are you good at?
• What gives you pleasure at work—what do you enjoy doing?
• What gives you meaning at work—what gives you a sense of purpose?
• What do you consider to be your ideal job?
• Where do you see yourself in a year/three to five years/10 years?
• What is it about this career goal that you’re interested in?
• How ready do you think you are for the next step in your career?
• What do you see as your next challenge?
• What do you think you’ll find the most challenging/rewarding aspect of your career goal?
1 | Build trust & transparency
The better you get at developing a trusting, confidential relationship the right way, the more likely you'll be an effective coach. Coaching is always about your clients, and where they wish to go. Coaching relationships should be built on transparency, trust, and vulnerability.  

  • DO:  Send ICF's Code of Ethics to your clients so they know about  the ethical standard you abided by.
  • DO:  Invite the client to share some information ahead of the coaching session about who they  are and their hopes for coaching.
  • DO:  Remind yourself of your client's potential and your capacity to draw out their ideas and next steps through coaching.
  • SHARE:  How can coaches remain laser-focused on the wellbeing of their clients?
  • SHARE:  How can you invite clients to share their hopes, dreams, challenges, and shortcomings?
2 | Follow the client's lead
Coaching is a partnership where, like dancing, you follow the client’s lead. "What do you want to talk about? " is a great opener and is the beginning of honoring the basic coaching agreement. Questions coaches ask should help clarify the focus of the coaching relationship, the purpose of the coaching session, and where clients want to end up as a result of coaching. Coaches allow clients to pick the topic, the measurements, the depth, even the pace of the conversations. If the client doesn’t say it, then the subject is off the table. Coaches must avoid digging deeper into topics that clients haven’t commented on during the conversation.
  • Do a quick self-evaluation after each coaching session. 
  • Ask yourself, "Did I follow the client's lead?  Did I avoid trying to fix their problem?  Did you help reveal their potential?
3 | Make your client the hero
Donald Miller, the founder of the company, Storybrand, states that the best marketing always makes the client the hero in the story. Coaches help clients identify their preferred future, describe the gap between their current situation and the preferred future along with the challenges they face, and then find ways to overcome their challenges that prevent them from achieving their desired outcomes. In the process of helping their clients shine, coaches help clients create a plan that moves them consistently toward their brighter future. When coaches become the “hero” in the story, it’s usually becomes they’ve switched, intentional or otherwise, to playing the role of a counselor, mentor, or consultant.
What's your client's vision?

1 | Make getting the relationship right your first priority.

2 | Follow the client’s lead.

4  |  Tap into the client’s vision to accelerate transformation.

3  |  Make the client the hero in the story.

Vision-casting is powerful catalyst for sparking transformation. Coaches help their clients define their dreams and better understand what motivates them. Coaches help clients connect what they do next with the dreams they’re seeking to fulfill.  Questions coaches often ask to tap into a client’s vision include:
  • “What would you like to be different in your life or ministry a year from now?”
  • “If you could wave a magic want, what would you change about your current setting?”
  • “What’s the legacy you’d like to leave for your children or grandchildren?”
  • “What do you want this organization to remember you for?”
  • "How soon do you want this done?"
  • "What will finishing this do for you and your vision?"
Keep your client's attention on how their vision will require them to change. Help them name the measurable changes the transition process will require.

5  |  If nothing’s changing, you’re not coaching.

Coaches go beyond walking alongside clients and serving as confidential dialogue partners. They help clients name and act on their intentions. They nudge clients toward their preferred futures and invite clients to set short-term wins and deadlines. Coaches invite their clients to pay attention to changes in their attitudes, assumptions, approaches, and actions. They help clients take shuffle steps toward their desired outcomes. After helping clients describe their dreams; coaches help them drill down on their intentions and list what they need to do now, or next, to live into their preferred future.
  • Help the client focus on just one or two areas that they'd like to take action on.
  • Help the client make their actions concrete. Help them name   what will they specifically will do and when it will be done.

6  |  Get your facts straight and focus on the right issues.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in a coaching conversation is figuring out what’s the primary focus of the conversation and the most pressing issues. It’s easy to rush this process and end up not addressing the client’s most pressing or significant issues based on misleading information and false assumptions. Some questions I often raise to surface these issues include:
  • Help me understand how you arrived at this conclusion?
  • “On a scale of 1-10, how important is this issue to you personally?”
  • “In addition to this problem, what else prevents you from moving forward?”
  • “What are the 3 most pressing issues you’re currently facing? Which one is most important?  Most urgent?”
  • “What leads you to believe that this is your biggest issue? What else, or who else, plays a contributing role?”

7  |  Seek the right questions rather than the right answers.

If you tend to be a fixer or like being the expert, you may find it hard to not give advice or suggest ways to move forward. Great coaches find ways to tap into the client’s wisdom through powerful question such as, “I don’t know, what do you think?” I like to ask BOLD questions that:
  • BUILD forward momentum.
  • OPEN up possibilities and new pathways.
  • LEAVE space for reflection and re-imagination.
  • DO something that helps the client dive into action.
Bold questions have more than one answer. They create space for the client to explore something that is unfamiliar or even daunting. They point client toward something that wasn’t on their radar.

8  |  Keep questions concise, concrete, and open-ended.

Keep your questions short (6-8 words) and concrete. Allow space for the client to reflect and respond. Recording a few of your coaching sessions (with the expressed permission of the client). Create a transcript of the coaching conversation. Notice how long your questions are. Pay attention to how much you’re talking compared to your client. I find that the best coaches almost always speak less than 20% of the time. You may discover that the power of your questions are inversely proportional to their length.

9  |  Avoid explaining your questions

Leave out the details when asking questions. Allow the client to fill in the gaps as needed. When you seek to set up or explain your questions, you increase the likelihood of injecting your assumptions and values into the conversation. You may lead clients in directions they didn’t wish to go.

10  |  Create space between coaching sessions.

Leave at least 15 minutes between coaching sessions to clear your mind. I like to take a short walk or do some stretching exercises. I like to pray for my clients and discern which core competency I want to pay closer attention to during the session.
  • What might you do mentally, physically, or spiritually to prepare for a coaching session?

11  |  Smile while on the phone or via Zoom.

This may sound foolish, but it usually helps coaches be more present and playful during the coaching conversations. Coaching can be fun AND impactful. Enjoy the clients you seek to serve. In similar fashion, think about how you might draw out the gifts, strengths and potential of your clients.

12  |  Share observations while avoiding interpretations.

Coaches listen actively, and do so, with their eyes and ears. Share your observations using “I noticed” statements such as (allow space for silent reflection):
  • “I noticed some hesitation when you responded to that last question.”
  • “I noticed that you seemed energized/animated when discussing . . .”
  • “You tone of voice changed when you began talking about . . .”
  • “You broke into a big smile when mentioning . . .”
  • “I sense some sadness in your recent remark about . . .
  • “I noticed that you didn’t mention what you did to help ensure that project’s success . . .”

13  |  Craft questions that stretch clients and inspire action.

Coaches facilitate change in clients by stretching their capacities, their awareness and perceived limitations. Coaches raise questions that help clients step back and learn from results, or step forward to a new way of thinking, doing and being. Great coaches strive to move people beyond a state of inertia and toward a state of learning, experimentation, and action.  

14  |  Invite the client to do pre-work or post-work.

To accelerate a client’s learning and progress, ask the client if they’d be open to learning about, or reflecting on topics or projects that increase their awareness or capacities. This could include items like making a list of resources (assets) to support their progress, listing 3-5 people who could help, mentor or hold them accountable, listing skills they need to develop, etc. Having clients tend to these types of action steps often helps clients move forward, faster.

15  |  Ask the client, “What did you find most helpful from today's conversation?”

This question helps you understand what’s stirring in the mind of your client, what types of shifts may be occurring in their assumptions, attitudes, actions and approaches, and also gives you a window into how your coaching is impacting other people.  It may give you insights on what to raise in a future session, and help you refine your coaching approach and practices.

CHAPTER  4  |  Student Assignments

Outcomes  and  Assignments

  • To pay attention to the foundational elements to lead to consistently effective coaching experiences.
  • To customize the list found in the chapter and make it your own.
CHAPTER 4-1:  What are your takeaways after reading and reflecting on the 15 tips?
CHAPTER 4-2:  List the 3 tips found in this chapter you need to pay closer attention to in the future.
CHAPTER 4-3:  Based on your own learnings as a coach, list tips you'd add to this list.
Why do these hacks help clients get better results?
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1 | Live Well
2 | Lead Well
3 | Coach Well
4 | Build Faith
5 | Renew Your Church
6 | Improve Communications
7 | Deepen Connections
8 | Giving & Engagement
9 | Governance & Staffing
Book Summaries
Everyday Reinvention

  REFLECTIONS

              Insights,  ideas, and  applications  from  former  students

"The shorter the question, the better the answer. I also need to need to become more comfortable with pausing after asking a short question to give clients time to reflect and respond."

"I need to remind myself of the incredible capacities of my clients so I don't sabotage their success. I also need more  space between coaching sessions so I'm ready to listen to what the client shares."