The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence

Appendix

 

A skilled coach doesn’t ask questions for the sake of asking questions. Rather, she probes to assess learning, help the learner discover gaps in his or her thinking, and identify when the improvement coach needs to shift to directive coaching (telling) to teach specific improvement skills. Because this style of asking questions is new to many of the people I work with, I’ve developed a guide to help them use Socratic questioning to develop others.

I’ve found a taxonomy of Socratic questions developed by Richard Paul, and adapted by many others (see references below), to be a helpful starting point. When beginning to serve as an improvement coach, Paul’s classification (plus two additional categories I’ve added) can help you think about ...