The great unasked questions

Author

Kavit Haria
May 07, 2024

Hi friend!

3 ideas from my week that can add velocity to your Coaching Flywheel

  1. The great unasked questions

You are only as effective as your best questions. The great questions are also usually the ones we have failed to yet ask. Coaches are rigorously trained to listen with their whole body and ask powerful, opening questions.

When I’m stuck, working through an idea, looking for an innovation or seeking a breakthrough, it is the quality of my questions that gives rise to the quality of the solution. I have witnessed this in my professional career many times.

A favourite author of mine, Keith Cunningham, teaches the idea of Thinking Time which I and some of my team practice every week. Each week, set aside an hour, find your best unasked question, write it at the top of your journal and sit with a pen. You must not touch your devices. Ideally go to your creative cabin, that spot where your juices flow the most. Then write your responses.

In this uninterrupted space, you will find your own distractions, the unsettled, monkey mind, and then slowly, with practice, the light of genius will start to shine through. There you will find magical flow. The breakthroughs to your best self, in every area of your life.

My “Thinking Time” is usually reserved on my calendar for Wednesday mornings. Experiment this week. Here are some great unasked questions for you to try. Pick one and let me know how it goes. If you like this, I can share more.

Questions for your Thinking Time

1. If I could design the most productive 60 min of my week what would I be doing?

2. What are three bad habits/business practices we have tolerated that are undermining our results?

3. What is the discipline I need to adopt to create the outcomes I want?

4. Where am I not practicing with the level of intensity I know I am capable of?

  1. What keeps you going?

In the latest issue of HBR, there is a fantastic interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Hernan Diaz in the “Life’s Work” column. In one of the questions, he is asked what makes him keep going even after having so many rejections before his first best-seller. His response is encouraging so I have pasted it below. 

Well, becoming a writer with the intention of winning a major award or getting a big advance is the lousiest business proposition on planet Earth. I am being very honest when I say that was never part of my plan. It was just the love of sentences, the need to be half submerged in language all the time, and the joy of it. Writing is pure pleasure.

I'm not saying it's always easy. Some days it's excruciating and difficult, and I feel that I've lost it, as anyone in their right mind would feel at many junctures writing a book. But when I take a step back, there's nothing else I would rather do, so I keep doing it. Faced with this wall of rejection, many years of manuscripts being turned down one after another, the answer was always in the work itself.

Hernan Diaz

In short, fall in love and pursue your craft. In our case, coaching. Focus on the art and science of coaching and get better at it every day. Be submerged in the joy of it. It is not easy. A great coach who continues in her everyday pursuit of mastery will create transformation upon transformation for every client she touches.   

  1. Overload

We live in an age overloaded with information, resources, guidance, books, audio books, courses, and now, social media videos. We have more possibilities and freedom than any people who have ever lived. 

Yet there is more junk, more mediocrity, more garbage to sort through than ever too.

I cannot tell you how many coaches I meet that have complicated offerings. Various packages, bundled options, lots of “add ons” in the view that they are giving me, the client, more value and more options to choose from.  

As a client, I want less options, I want to be nurtured and guided, I want direction, I want to know you can truly help me move the needle. If you can show me this, then I am ready to work with you. 

So, herein lies one of the greatest roles that we play, in our industry of helping people, whether we are change makers, experts, coaches or consultants.... 

Can we get better at helping people to see clearly what's right and valuable?  Can we study the art and science of making better decisions for ourselves and others? Can we help people realise that the solutions to their challenges frustrations and problems exist, and that they can truly achieve what they'd like to?

We have to shed most things that come our way in order to find the rare jewel that really moves us to action.  

How good, effective and brilliant can we be at creating the most versatile, most powerful, most impactful, most influential and most transformational coaching, training or teachings for our ideal clients? These are the people we live to serve and the people who serve and support our own lives and dreams. 

Subtract.... Strip away.... Delete.... Remove.....  Get clear on what they truly require to achieve their goals, and then offer them just that. Remove the distraction.

That’s all for this week… but one more thing. If you’re enjoying this, can you do me a favour and forward it to a friend? Thanks.

Kavit