Asking “Power Questions”

One of the more important things that a coach can do for a client is to cause him to see things in a new, more useful perspective. A good way to do this is by asking your client a Power Question.

As the name suggest, a power questions is a question that carries a lot of power to create a change. It is intended to cut through the fog and clutter of the client’s thought process and touch the essence of an issue. It is a question that you ask not to get an answer, but to cause your client to rethink his automatic thoughts or reactions on something, or to cause him to consider something that he never really though about.

Power questions vary according to subject. There is no uniform way to ask them. However, they are always directed at the assumption, sometimes the hidden assumptions, that govern the client’s response in a situation. Here are some true examples from coaching session:

• “What could realistically happen if you choose not to submit to this colleague’s wishes?”
• “Can you present a fact, something that happened in reality that supports your assumption that doing this will get you fired?”
• “Can you explain why you, a woman who couldn’t care less what others think in practically all aspects of life, hold yourself accountable to an external ideal of parenthood?”
• “What is holding you back?”
• “Who is holding the whip that is driving you?”

In all cases, the question is meant for the client to answer to himself. I often tell my clients that I do not need the answer, and will not discuss it in our sessions. This tends to reinforce the idea that there is a lesson for them to learn, rather than information for me to uncover.

Not being a psychologist, I tend to avoid going into my client’s psychology. However, at times there are things so apparent, that it feels like a wasted opportunity not to touch them. Asking a power questions is an effective way for me to point out things in the client’s thought process, without actually suggesting anything that I am not qualified to pursue. In such cases I am extra careful to point out that this is entirely for the client to consider, and I do not want to be told the answer. Put in such an oblique way, it is still enough to get the client thinking, but allows him to easily reject any influence if the direction I pointed doesn’t suit him.

An example of that: I once had a client who was constantly putting on acts to everybody around her, especially to authority figures. This was wasting a lot of her energy and putting her under a lot of pressure. In our conversations, she described several instances where her mother would not reveal her true feelings and put on an act. Not being qualified to dig into this, all I did was to tell my client that before our next meeting, I want her to think about a question that was just for her: “Are there any similarities between your behavior toward your boss and your mother’s behavior with your dad?”

In this specific case, this question happened to be the key to an entire change process that my client went through once she understood that her behavior was “pre-programmed” instead of being based upon her current reality.

This is no isolated case. In a significant portion of my coaching cases, the Power Question proved to be the pivot around which the client created the most significant change. Learning to ask such questions is a useful tool.