Susan Britton MCC breaks down ICF marker 7.6: asking one clear question at a time so clients can think deeply. Record your sessions and review transcripts to spot where you stack multiple questions, which causes clients to answer only the last one and miss the powerful ones you asked first.
Susan with the Academies, and I have been talking about tips for ICF #7 recently, and these are the PCC markers that are going to ensure that you're demonstrating skills at a PCC level, Professional Certified Coach level, for the ICF credentialing. And I'm going to talk now about PCC marker #7.6, and that one has to do with the coach asking open-ended, direct, clear questions one at a time at a pace that's going to allow for the client to really do some deeper thinking. So one of the best tips I can give for being able to know whether or not you're doing that is to record your sessions, obviously with the client's permission, record them, and then go back and line through your transcripts and highlight the places where you asked clear questions one at a time, and notice what's different for the client when, when they get one question at a time versus if you're asking multiple stacked questions, 2 or 3 all in one breath. Oftentimes the client is just going to answer the very last thing that you asked, and your first question might have been the most powerful. So look at those transcripts, and that'll really help you to become great, have greater awareness around, am I hitting 7.6? That's also one that has an asterisk next to it, meaning you have to do it throughout the session, not just one at a time, one time.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
