WMBA 6633 Week 6 Coaching Questions Practice Example

Fourteen Questions With a Supervisor Whose Former Peer Ignores Him: A Coaching Exchange Written as a Script, With a Note on Why Each Question Was Asked and Where His Answers Changed My Direction

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6633: Personal Leadership: Mentoring and Coaching

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Fourteen Questions With a Supervisor Whose Former Peer Ignores Him: A Coaching Exchange Written as a Script, With a Note on Why Each Question Was Asked and Where His Answers Changed My Direction

The Exchange

This exchange took place in the eighth week of coaching D. R., the former forklift lead now supervising second shift at the warehouse (a composite operation in central Indiana). He raised a new topic: a senior picker, a friend from his years on the floor, was ignoring his instructions about which orders to pick first. The session lasted thirty-five minutes. I reconstructed the exchange from notes the same night.

Question 1. "What's happening with Carl?"

D. R.: "He picks his own order. I tell him the Peterson orders go first and he does the small stuff because it moves his numbers."

Why I asked: an open question to let him describe the situation in his words before I framed it.

Question 2. "What do you mean by moves his numbers?"

D. R.: "Pickers get a bonus on lines per hour. Small orders are more lines."

Why I asked: he used a phrase that seemed to hold the explanation, so I followed it rather than moving on.

Question 3. "So when he picks the small orders, what does he get?"

D. R.: "Maybe forty dollars a week extra."

Why I asked: to make the incentive concrete; this answer changed my direction, because the problem now looked like the bonus design, not only Carl.

Question 4. "And what happens when the Peterson orders go out late?"

D. R.: "The truck leaves at 1 a.m. If they're not done, they wait a day and the customer calls first shift."

Why I asked: to set the cost of the behavior beside its reward.

Question 5. "Have you told Carl about the truck?"

D. R.: "Not really. He knows."

Why I asked: a closed question, deliberately, to check an assumption.

Question 6. "What makes you think he knows?"

D. R.: "Well, he's been here longer than me." He paused. "I guess I never said it."

Why I asked: his first answer was an assumption, and asking for its basis let him see the gap himself.

Question 7. "What's different about talking to Carl now versus a year ago?"

D. R.: "A year ago we were both pickers. Now I'm his boss and it feels weird to tell him what to do."

Why I asked: I suspected the real difficulty was the change in relationship; this answer confirmed it and moved the conversation from orders to his role.

Question 8. "What would you want Carl to understand?"

D. R.: "That I'm not trying to cost him money. The truck is the problem."

Why I asked: to move from the problem to what he wanted, a shift toward solutions.

Question 9. "If it went well, what would the conversation with Carl sound like?"

D. R.: "I'd tell him about the truck and ask him to do Peterson first, and he'd say okay."

Why I asked: a solution-focused question, inviting him to picture success.

Question 10. "What might Carl say that you'd find hard to answer?"

D. R.: "That I'm asking him to lose money."

Why I asked: to prepare him for the objection most likely to derail the conversation.

Question 11. "Is he right?"

D. R.: "Kind of. If he does the big orders, his lines go down."

Why I asked: to test whether D. R. could see Carl's side, which matters for the conversation's tone.

Question 12. "What could you change, not just ask?"

D. R.: "I could ask the shift manager if priority orders could count extra for the bonus. Or I could put Carl on Peterson and give the small orders to someone newer."

Why I asked: to widen his options beyond persuasion; his answers here were better than anything I had in mind.

Question 13. "Which would you try first?"

D. R.: "Talk to Carl tomorrow and ask the shift manager about the bonus this week."

Why I asked: to move from options to a commitment.

Question 14. "How will you know the talk with Carl worked?"

D. R.: "If Peterson's done before the truck three nights in a row."

Why I asked: to have him set his own measure of success.

Where the Answers Changed My Direction

I came into the session expecting to coach D. R. on giving direct instructions to a resistant employee. Two answers changed that. The answer to question 3 revealed that the bonus rewarded the behavior D. R. wanted to stop, which turned part of the problem into a design issue he could raise with his manager. The answer to question 7 revealed that the harder problem was his discomfort giving direction to a former peer. Had I gone straight to advice about assertiveness, I would have missed both.

What Happened Next

Two days after the session, D. R. told Carl about the 1 a.m. truck before the shift began, privately at the pick station rather than in the huddle. Carl picked the Peterson orders first that night and the next two, and the orders made the truck each time. The bonus question went to the shift manager, who agreed to weight priority lines more heavily from the next pay period. The exchange did not solve D. R.'s discomfort with directing a former peer, and that topic returned in later sessions.

What the Practice Showed About My Questions

Of the fourteen questions, eleven were open and three closed. Theeboom et al. (2014) found that coaching improves goal-directed self-regulation, and questions that let the coachee set the direction are how that happens in a single session. The closed ones, questions 5, 11 and 13, were useful at specific points: checking an assumption, testing his empathy and securing a commitment. Grant and O'Connor (2010) found in a pilot study that solution-focused coaching questions increased goal approach and positive affect more than problem-focused questions, which only reduced negative affect. My session moved from problem-focused questions, 1 through 7, to solution-focused ones, 8 through 14, and D. R.'s energy changed visibly when it did. Whitmore (2017) argues that the coach's questions should follow the coachee's interest and answers, not a script, and this exchange was useful precisely because I abandoned the script I came with.

References

Grant, A. M., & O'Connor, S. A. (2010). The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching questions: A pilot study with implications for practice. Industrial and Commercial Training, 42(2), 102-111. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197851011026090

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499

Whitmore, J. (2017). Coaching for performance: The principles and practice of coaching and leadership (5th ed.). Nicholas Brealey.