The Top Questions to Ask Your Coach (And One to Ask Yourself)
The Top Questions to Ask Your Coach (And One to Ask Yourself)
Business leaders have many reasons for choosing to work with a professional coach. Whether they’re looking to pursue a strategic goal, receive honest feedback, or work with an experienced advisor in the decision-making process, a business coach can help current (and future) leaders unlock their full potential.
But to get the most out of a coaching relationship, it’s important to ask lots of questions. And while there are no bad questions when it comes to personal and professional development, there are some really good ones. We’ve put together the top questions we recommend asking your coach – and one to ask yourself.
1. What Are My Biases?
We all have biases, and we all rely on habits that help us get the job done. Our biases impact every level of our decision-making process – even if we’re unaware we have them. Left unchecked, our biases can hold us back and can keep us stuck in self-defeating patterns. A good coach can offer you a new perspective that can shake up old habits and hidden assumptions.
2. How Can I Be More Open to Feedback?
To be successful in a coaching relationship, it’s crucial to adopt a ‘coachable’ mindset. Accepting feedback, especially if you’re used to being the leader that everyone else relies on, can leave you feeling vulnerable. Asking your coach what you can proactively do to stay curious and open to the process will help make it easier for them to coach you and allow you to make the most of your coaching experience.
3. How Should I Talk to Myself?
How we talk to ourselves is so crucial to our confidence and success. Oftentimes, we are our own worst critics, and we may have no problem saying self-defeating things to ourselves we would never dream of saying to a colleague. Yes, it’s good to be self-aware and push yourself to do better, but a coach can help you put things into perspective and find ways of talking to yourself that are motivating, not demoralizing.
4. How Will We Define and Evaluate Success?
Setting out on a journey is useless and frustrating if you don’t actually know where you’re going. But if you’ve only been measuring success with a limited set of metrics, there might be a lot of potential that you are missing out on. By asking to define what success looks like together, a coach can work with you to help you expand and refine your definition of success – and the possibilities of what can be achieved.
5. Am I Ready to Commit to the Process?
This one is a question to ask yourself. Ultimately, a coach is a catalyst. There are bridges you can walk across – but you need to be ready to take the first step. It’s important to be honest with yourself about your readiness for a process that will push you outside of your comfort zone. Ultimately, nothing worth doing is easy, so check in with yourself to make sure you’re in the right headspace to commit to the coaching process.
At Cenera, our team of accredited coaches offers unmatched coaching and leadership experience focusing on tangible, trackable results.
Reach out to the team at Cenera today if you’re ready to invest in your organization’s leadership potential.
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