Susan Britton MCC breaks down ICF PCC Marker 7.6: asking one open-ended question at a time, then pausing. She contrasts what/how questions with closed do/can/have ones, and shares deeper stems like "What would it take to change the way you think about this?" The key is silence, letting clients think.
Susan with the Academies, and I am out talking about ICF PCC markers right now. And the one that I want to address again, I just did another tip around it, I believe, but I really want to touch base back on ICF PCC marker 7.6. So that's where the coach asks questions one at a time, open-ended, and leave space for the client to give some thought so that they can deepen their thinking. Everybody knows that open-ended questions are usually the way to go in coaching. You want to start your questions with whats and hows as opposed to closed-ended questions that are going to be do you, can you, have you thought of. So putting that aside, thinking about how do I ask those open-ended questions in a way that really go deeper. And so here's just a couple of introductory phrases that you might use for those questions that are open-ended. For example, what would it take to change the way you think about this? What would need to change within yourself to be able to look at this differently? How How would you go about changing something that has been part of your world and your thinking for decades now? Like, this is a big change. How would you go about that? So those are powerful open-ended questions that would deserve some silence at the end of them to allow the client to think about that, and then that would help you hit the ICF PCC marker of 7.6.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
