Using Socratic Questioning in Coaching

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Michael Neenan

Published online: 8 July 2008

 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008

Abstract Socratic questioning, a cornerstone of CBT, is as equally useful in

coaching to raise awareness, promote reﬂection and improve problem-solving

thinking. Padesky’s (Socratic questioning: Changing minds or guiding discovery?

1993) bifurcation of Socratic questioning, changing minds versus guiding discovery,

is commented upon. The characteristics of good Socratic questions are enumerated,

the pitfalls of experienced coaches’ over-reliance on intuition to guide their ques-

tioning is discussed and how continuing deliberate practice through, for example,

providing the logical basis for sequencing questions can correct this ‘intuition bias’.

Socratic questioning is demonstrated in a number of coach–coachee dialogues with

accompanying commentary. Finally, it is emphasized that asking good Socratic

questions is indispensable to the practice of effective coaching.

Keywords Socratic  Questions  CBT  Coach  Coachee  Deliberate practice

Introduction

Coaching has been deﬁned as ‘the art of facilitating the performance, learning and

development of another’ (Downey 2003, p. 21). A signiﬁcant part of a coach’s

verbal activity is devoted to asking questions in order to, among other things, gather

assessment information, clarify points, reveal core values, establish goals, develop

action plans, pinpoint and tackle blocks to change. However, asking vague or

general questions may not elicit much relevant information and such questions may

have a rather aimless quality about them instead of a particular purpose in a speciﬁc

context, e.g. reviewing action assignments: respectively, ‘How are things since I last

M. Neenan (&)

Centre for Coaching, Broadway House, 3 High Street, Bromley, Kent BR1 1LF, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

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J Rat-Emo Cognitive-Behav Ther (2009) 27:249–264

DOI 10.1007/s10942-007-0076-z

saw you?’ versus ‘Did you carry out the agreed task?’ The ﬁrst question has the

potential to make the session diffuse and discursive while the second is likely to

concentrate the coachee’s mind on discussing his goal-directed tasks, whether or not

they were carried out, and maintaining continuity from the previous session. If he

did carry out the task, ‘Did you learn anything from it?’, and if he did not, ‘How did

you stop yourself from carrying it out?’ (this question emphasizes personal

responsibility more than ‘What stopped you …?’). Also, as coaching is usually a

short-term endeavour it is important to try and make every question count.

Therefore, for the aforementioned reasons, not all questions are equally useful.

Hence the focus in this article on using questions that are likely to make a greater

impact in a shorter space of time.

A Socratic stance in coaching is likely to achieve this aim. Derived from the

Greek philosopher, Socrates, this stance focuses on asking a person a series of open-

ended questions to help promote reﬂection; this, in turn, is likely to produce

knowledge which is currently outside of her awareness and thereby enable her to

develop more helpful perspectives and actions in tackling her difﬁculties. Through

this method people are able to reach their own conclusions rather than being told

what these should be by the questioner. However, questions other than Socratic ones

are useful at times. Some examples: closed questions to focus the person’s response,

‘Have you decided which issue to work on ﬁrst?’ or conﬁrm what the other person

has said, ‘Therefore, is the sticking point for you your manager’s refusal to

apologize?’ (Luecke 2004); direct questions to gather assessment information, ‘How

many times this month have you been late for meetings?’; and leading questions to

test the coach’s assumptions, ‘Are you more worried than excited about the

promotion?’ It is important that coaches don’t become ‘stuck’ in Socratic mode.

DiGiuseppe (1991) has criticized using Socratic questioning as the only method of

learning if it becomes obvious to the coach that some coachees would clearly proﬁt

from direct explanations of how to solve their problems. Once a potential solution

has been offered, the coach can revert to a Socratic style by asking for comments on

the proposed solution.

Socratic questioning is a cornerstone of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT; Beck

et al. 1993; Padesky and Greenberger 1995). CBT focuses on how changing our

thinking leads to emotional and behavioural change. Naturally enough, Socratic

questioning has the same importance in cognitive behavioural coaching (CBC;

Neenan 2006; Neenan and Dryden 2002). In fact, coaching and CBT have the same

aim: problem resolution—closing the performance gap in coaching and the

amelioration of disturbed thoughts, feelings and behaviours in CBT (Grieger 2007).

Other similarities between CBT and CBC include: staying in the present, seeking

belief as well as behaviour change, carrying out and reviewing between-session

goal-oriented tasks, setting an agenda in each session, seeing the relationship as a

partnership in problem-solving, and developing an experimental, curious approach

to change. The ultimate aim of coaching and CBT is to help people become their

own coach or therapist. Therefore, the move from CBT to coaching may not be as

difﬁcult as it seems and some coaching training can ease this transition. However, it

is important to remember that people seeking coaching are unlikely to have

‘clinically signiﬁcant mental health issues or abnormal levels of stress’ (Green et al.

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2006, p. 142), so the focus is on achieving personal and/or professional fulﬁlment,

not the understanding and remediation of psychological disturbance.

Changing Minds or Guiding Discovery?

While Socratic questioning is much vaunted in the CBT literature, therapists have

different ideas about what it refers to. Padesky (1993) asks the intriguing question:

‘Is the primary purpose of Socratic questioning to change minds or guide

discovery?’(p. 2).Changing minds is using questions to steer a person towards

giving answers that you want to hear, so the predetermined conclusions are built

into the questions you ask while guiding discovery is based on a genuine curiosity

about where the questioning will lead, what might be uncovered and what the

person will do with this material. For example, consider a person who is reluctant to

give his opinions at meetings in case he is ridiculed. A changing minds approach

might ask: ‘Do you have any evidence that you will be ridiculed if you give your

opinions?’ Reply: ‘None really.’ The logical next step from the coach’s viewpoint is

for the coachee to speak up and see what happens; if no one laughs at him then his

fears are unfounded or reassure him that if he does get some negative responses it

won’t be as bad as it seems (the coach is pushing him towards her perceived

solution). Changing minds can give the impression that the coach has nothing to

learn from the coachee, while the coachee might believe that his viewpoint is being

undermined by the coach rather than being taken seriously by her (Westbrook et al.

2007).

A guided discovery approach would want to pursue the personal meaning of

being ridiculed and why it is such a troubling issue for him—this is where his focus

is: ‘If my colleagues ridicule me, then I’ll lose their respect and won’t be taken

seriously.’ Subsequent questions to illuminate the issue further might be: ‘How do

you know you have their respect to lose or are taken seriously?’ ‘Could you lose this

respect by remaining silent in the meetings?’ ‘Is there a way of reconciling your

stated goal of speaking up in meetings with accepting the possibility of being

ridiculed?’ ‘Can you be made to feel inferior without your consent?’ The coach is

encouraging the person to take a wider view of the situation rather than the

constricted one he has adopted so that other possibilities can emerge to tackle this

issue. It can be tempting to step in and tell the person what to do when he struggles

to ﬁnd an answer or way forward but, as Meichenbaum (quoted in Hoyt 2000)

cautions practitioners, don’t ‘act as surrogate frontal lobes for [your] clients’ (p. 60),

i.e. do their thinking for them. By acting in this way, you are depriving them of

acquiring knowledge through their own efforts.

Padesky (1993) favours guided discovery over changing minds in CBT: ‘There is

no [one] answer. There are only good questions that guide discovery of a million

different individual answers’ (p. 11). The former approach would be the one I

support in coaching though, in my teaching experience, some coaches seek to

change minds in order to convince themselves of their competence (alternatively,

the changing minds approach might have been the only method they were taught).

Guided discovery is, for these coaches, unpredictable, wishy-washy and, most

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importantly, unlikely to deliver the ‘quick wins’ they are seeking (achieving some

results rapidly). Changing minds is the coach’s agenda for coachee change while

guided discovery is allowing the coachee’s agenda to take shape.

However, having said all that and at the risk of contradicting myself, I believe that

the differences between changing minds and guided discovery can be overstated:

both approaches are aimed at changing beliefs but the former one is mainly coach-led

while the latter one is a joint enterprise rather than coachee-led—the coach is, after

all, guiding the coachee’s discovery. This brings to mind Auerbach’s (2006)

description of his coaching role as a ‘thought partner’—clarifying and enhancing the

person’s goal-directed thinking. Changing minds and guided discovery can be seen

as endpoints on a scale with the coach moving up and down the scale as necessary. In

my own case, I favour guided discovery more but this will depend on the coachee’s

preferences for a particular coaching style, how many sessions we have, the

exigencies of the moment, my desire to maintain ﬂexibility of response to changing

circumstances and, unfortunately, my own impatience at times to move coaching

along at my timetable instead of the coachee’s.

‘Is It Good Enough?’

So, what are good questions to ask in guiding discovery? As a philosopher might

say, ‘It all depends on what you mean by ‘‘good’’.’ Good Socratic questions I would

suggest are:

*Concise—keeping the focus on the coachee

*Clear—reducing potential coachee confusion or misunderstanding by avoiding

prolixity or jargon

*Open—inviting participation and exploring ideas

*Purposeful—you can explain the reasons for the questions you’ve asked

*Constructive—promoting insight and action

*Focused—on the coachee’s current concerns

*Tentative—not assuming the coachee can answer your question

*Neutral—not signalling the answer which would indicate your viewpoint

For example, ‘Do you know what you are worried about in giving your presentation

to the board?’ This question will help the person to maintain her introspective focus

on discovering what is troubling her as opposed to a convoluted one which is likely

pull her away from this focus as she struggles to understand the coach, e.g. ‘So we

know it’s something about worry. Giving a presentation can be a daunting prospect

which would probably cause concerns in most or all people who do it. Worry itself

is a source of important information about the self. So I’m wondering if it’s about

apprehension of a possibly adverse outcome such as giving a less than impressive

performance or not being able to answer a tough question or could it be something

else?’ Coaching should strive to be a vagueness-free zone, so purge the verbiage!

Some coaching books (e.g. Megginson and Clutterbuck 2005) give lists of good

questions to ask which can be helpful in increasing your own store; however,

parroting memorized questions to ‘impress’ your coachees is not a good idea;

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providing yourself with rationales for the questions is because it shows you are

thinking critically about what you are asking.

Erosion of Expertise

Being highly proﬁcient at what you do does not necessarily mean that you can

explain in detail the mechanics of what you do. Experienced coaches, like

experienced therapists, are likely to operate according to tacit procedural knowledge

in asking what they perceive to be good questions:

Procedural knowledge is the knowledge of ‘how to’ and ‘when to’—rules,

plans, and procedures—which leads to the direct application of skills. The

procedural knowledge of experienced therapists is often tacit—they just ‘do

it’. Like experts in other ﬁelds...the cognitive strategies of therapists change

over the course of development.…. Their knowledge ‘chunks’ and problem

solving strategies become progressively elaborated and reﬁned, and they build

a formidable repertoire of representative when–then rules, plans, procedures

and skills (Bennett-Levy 2006, p. 59).

Trainees watching expert coaches in action or reading coach–coachee dialogues

in books usually ask, ‘How did she know to ask that question at that moment?’ or

‘Why that question rather than this one?’ Being told that ‘Experience teaches you

what and when to ask’ doesn’t illuminate the when–then rules in action and you

might come to believe that the ‘mysteries’ of asking good questions are only known

to the ‘coachnoscenti’. Megginson and Clutterbuck (2005) ask if intuition can be

developed: ‘There is no simple and easy answer to that question. In all coaching and

mentoring sessions, asking the appropriate and ‘‘right’’ questions already has a

strong intuitional aspect to it’ (p. 106). Not providing explanations in coaching

books for the criteria underpinning the question-asking skills of the experts assumes

that maybe the readers are picking it up through osmosis! Along with commentary

on coach–coachee dialogues in books, demystifying intuition should also involve

coaches audiotaping sessions to provide analyses of their questioning styles and

then reﬂecting on how they can be improved in the light of coachees’ replies, e.g.

the coach realises that she is not rigorous enough in reviewing an action assignment

and allows ‘It went well’ to sufﬁce. The intuition of the expert can have its

drawbacks as Ericsson et al. (2007) point out:

It’s very easy to neglect deliberate practice [pushing yourself to undertake

tasks that are beyond your current level of competence and comfort]. Experts

who reach a high level of performance often ﬁnd themselves responding

automatically to speciﬁc situations and may come to rely exclusively on their

intuition. This leads to difﬁculties when they deal with atypical or rare cases,

because they’ve lost the ability to analyze a situation and work through the

right response. Experts may not recognize this creeping intuition bias, of

course, because there is no penalty until they encounter a situation in which a

habitual response fails and maybe even causes damage. Older professionals

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with a great deal of experience are particularly prone to falling into this trap,

but it’s certainly not inevitable (p. 119).

I once ran a CBT workshop for a group of very experienced and mainly older

executive coaches who said they were committed to Socratic questioning of the

guided discovery route but none of them audiotaped (or videotaped) their sessions.

How could they be so sure? ‘Intuition’ or ‘you just know’ were the favourite replies.

During the pairs’ exercises which were part of the course, I went round the room to

see how they were getting on with them and my overwhelming impression was that

many coaches were directive in their questioning (I’m certainly not implying that

this was how they were all the time). In order to make intuition more informed than

biased, deliberate practice is the key (Ericsson et al. 2007; for a detailed discussion

of the powers and perils of intuition, see Myers, 2007). The deliberate practice I

suggested to the executive coaches was to audiotape their sessions on a regular basis

and then provide rationales to their supervisors for the choice, phrasing and ordering

of the questions (see below) as this tripartite process ‘has a strong impact on the

organization of the [client’s] thought’ (Beck et al. 1993, p. 103). This suggestion did

not go down well because, from the comments I received, it would push them into

their discomfort zone and question their assumed intuitive expertise.

‘What’s in a Question?’

James and Morse (2007) suggest ‘a tripartite distinction of questions’ (p.508).

1. Types, e.g. open, closed, short, long, simple, complex, leading, direct.

2. Functions, e.g. to gather information about presenting issues, examine and

change unhelpful beliefs, develop action plans, establish goals, build and deal

with any difﬁculties in the coaching relationship, gain feedback both during and

at the end of sessions. If the function of the questions is to examine and change

unhelpful beliefs, it is important that the coach does not slip into the role of a

courtroom prosecutor and try to ‘expose’ inconsistencies in his coachee’s

thinking thereby forcing reluctant belief change on her. If there are such

inconsistencies, let them emerge through the coachee’s realization.

3. Sequencing of questions in a logical order. In CBC, questions are asked to help

the coachee identify beliefs and behaviours that block change as well as to

develop alternative beliefs and behaviours that are likely to promote change. In

the following example, I will explain the reasons for the logical order of my

questions with regard to these two processes. The coachee is a new manager

who micromanages the tasks he has delegated leaving his team members

believing that they ‘can’t be trusted’. He wants to stop micromanaging but ﬁnds

it difﬁcult to let go:

Coach: What might happen if you did let go?

[This is to make his concern explicit.]

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Coachee: If I let go, they might make a mess of things which I’ll have to clear

up which will then add to my workload. I’m busy enough.

Coach: Is that the issue: increased workload for you if they ‘make a mess of

things’? Or are there other concerns connected to this issue?

[This is to clarify if further exploration is required.]

Coachee: I also worry what my manager will think if my team are messing

up, but the main issue is the increased workload for me if things go wrong.

That’s the one I want to work on.

Coach: Okay. Do you think micromanagement increases or decreases your

workload?

[In business coaching, this is a key question to focus coachees’ minds on the

pragmatic consequences of retaining their current beliefs and behaviour—do

they lead to increased productivity, performance and proﬁt?]

Coachee: Well, delegation is supposed to reduce your workload, but it’s not

working like that?

Coach: Do you want it to work like that?

[This is seeking his commitment to change.]

Coachee: Yes. Thinking about it now, my micromanaging is keeping me on

the back foot with important work of my own, but there’s still that worry of

letting go.

Coach: What shall we look at ﬁrst: ways of letting go so you can get on with

your own important work or your worry about doing it?

[This is gaining a clear session focus.]

Coachee: Letting go.

Coach: How do you start doing that?

[Concentrating his mind on initial action steps.]

Coachee: Instead of micromanaging, step back.

Coach: How far and doing what instead?

[‘Step back’ is vague.]

Coachee: I could have regular meetings, say weekly, to determine progress. I

don’t want to lose control of the projects though.

Coach: Who’s ultimately in control of the delegated tasks and accountable

for the results of the team?

[This is to remind him of what he appears to have forgotten.]

Coachee: I am. I retain overall control.

Coach: So what effects might this have on your team when you step back?

[Broadening his view to take in potential team beneﬁts.]

Coachee: I know they’ll welcome my not breathing down their necks.

Coach: Could there be other maybe more important beneﬁts?

[Effective delegation is not just stepping back.]

Coachee: Let me see ... giving people a chance to show their abilities,

develop their potential, see who could step into my shoes when I’m away,

that sort of thing.

Coach: What about someone struggling with a task—will you automatically

take it over to get it done?

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[Stepping back can easily be changed to micromanaging again when

problems arise. Has he considered this?]

Coachee: That would be my ﬁrst thought, but on second thoughts I would try

to let the person work it out for herself. Coach them like you’re coaching me.

Coach: What might be the differences between a micromanaged team and a

coached one?

[Pulling the information together to see if a new perspective is emerging.]

Coachee: A micromanaged team is stiﬂed and resentful, I can vouch for that,

but a coached one, which seems a better way to do things, is bound to keep

on improving.

Coach: Has our discussion made any impact on your worry?

[This is to ascertain if thinking differently has made any change in how he feels.]

Coachee: I haven’t been worried while we were talking about making

improvements but now I’m focused on it, still worried somewhat but there is an

excitement and risk about doing things differently. Instead of being obsessed

with how the team is doing I can get on with my own work and catch up. Making

a mess of things is more likely to occur if I fall behind with my own work.

Coach: I forget who said it, but something like leaders gain authority by

giving it away.

[Hoping to reinforce his new approach.]

Coachee: I like that. You know most of what we talked about today I already

knew but I was afraid to do it. The answers are there if you look hard enough.

Coach: So what do you propose to do before our next session?

[This is to see if good intentions will be translated into results-focused action.]

Coachee: Have a meeting with the team to explain and implement my new

approach to delegation.

Of course, you may disagree with my sequencing of questions and the reasons for

them but it is important to provide a sound basis for your line of questioning, in

supervision for example, rather than simply relying on instinct or ‘just feeling my

way along’. In the next sections, further examples of Socratic questioning are

presented.

Dealing with Some Common Coaching Difﬁculties

‘I Don’t Know’

This familiar reply has a number of meanings (this list is not meant to be

exhaustive).

1. Lack of knowledge: The coach has asked a question which she assumed the

coachee could answer such as ‘What do you want from coaching?’ instead of ‘Do

you know what you want from coaching?’ Making assumptions without checking

them can become pervasive. Coaches are likely to see some individuals who are

high achievers in life and, because of this impressive track record, may assume that

they all naturally understand what’s involved in initiating and maintaining change

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with regard to their current difﬁculties. Not so. We all have our blind spots. As

Hanna (2002) observes, one of the fundamental mistakes made in therapy (and I

would extend this observation to coaching) ‘is to assume that clients understand

change processes. If they did, then change might be accomplished much easier and

quicker on a routine basis’ (p. 43). Questions that elicit ‘I don’t knows’ are not

Socratic and likely to force the coachee into a cognitive cul-de-sac, increase the

irritation levels of both coach and coachee and put the relationship under strain.

Every time you make an uncorroborated assumption, note down a ‘UA’ on a piece

of paper and see how many ‘UAs’ you’ve collected by the end of the week. Like

professional philosophers, never assume. Check with your coachees!

2. Lack of mental effort: If your hypothesis is that your coachee has not expended

much thinking time on your question, then in order to test it ask him to verbalize

how he processed your question:

Coachee: What’s the point of doing that?

Coach: To ﬁnd out what you did to try and answer the question.

Coachee: If the information doesn’t come to mind then it doesn’t come to mind.

What else can I say?

Coach: Do you mean if the information doesn’t come to mind immediately or

over time?

Coachee: Well, I suppose if it isn’t in my mind straightaway then I don’t really

search for it.

Coach: What might be the implications for your coaching goals of not searching

for it?

Coachee: Well, I’m not going to make progress.

Coach: Do you want to make progress?

Coachee: Of course I do.

Coach: So how do you go about searching for an answer to my question without

saying ‘I don’t know’?

Coachee: Ask me the question again and this time I will really concentrate on it.

When ‘I don’t know’ is based on lack of mental effort, it can be very useful to

drop the phrase from the sessions so it can no longer be used as a bolt-hole (but

watch out for the emergence of a substitute such as ‘I’m not sure’). It is important

that you do not answer the question yourself and thereby strengthen the coachee’s

tendencies towards not making much mental effort. You can ask the coachee after

several minutes of silence if he wants the question repeated but, as Fournies (2000)

observes, let the person know by your body language (e.g. sitting back comfortably

in the chair) that you are not going to answer it.

3. A protective response: The coach’s questions might be inching towards issues

that the coachee ﬁnds too distressing to discuss, e.g. not getting the promotion she

so wanted or being treated badly by her boss. Signs that this might be the case are a

lowering of her mood, avoiding eye contact, changes in body posture and voice

tone, longer silences between questions. The coach can suggest conducting an in-

session experiment whereby the coachee talks about the issue for ﬁve minutes to test

her prediction (coachee’s) that she will be ‘overwhelmed and lose control’. At the

end of 5 min—it is very important not to go beyond the agreed time limit—the

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accuracy of the prediction can be assessed and the coachee can decide whether or

not to continue (in my experience most do). If the coachee decides to terminate

discussion of that particular issue, it can always be reactivated at a later date when

she feels more psychologically able to deal with it.

4. As a punishment: The coachee does know the answers to the coach’s questions

but is deliberately withholding the information because of, for example, his belief

that she has slighted him. The relationship will suffer and it is the coach’s

responsibility to investigate the reasons for this rupture and initiate its repair:

Coach: Have I said or done anything to annoy you?

Coachee: Yes! You’ve talked over me on several occasions. I ﬁnd it rude and

disrespectful when you do that. Why should I answer your questions when you

behave like that?

Coach: I apologize for my behaviour and it won’t happen again. Is my apology

sufﬁcient to refocus attention on your concerns or are there more comments you

would like to make about my behaviour?

Coachee: Yes, it is sufﬁcient. I just hope you mean what you say.

The coach will need to monitor closely her behaviour in order to fulﬁl her assurance

and also probe the reasons for her ‘talking over’ tendencies: ‘What stops me from

letting him ﬁnish what he has to say?’ ‘Answer: because I want to jump in and

impress him with my sharp mind.’

5. Used sarcastically and followed by, ‘You seem to have all the answers.’ The

coach has been behaving like a wiseacre: he sees the coachee as an audience who

will appreciate his ‘wisdom’ but she is unimpressed. Maybe the coach’s supervisor,

reviewing the session audiotape, might ask: ‘Listen very carefully to her replies: do

you think she is responding positively to all the wisdom you’re offering?’

The Sound of Silence

To the best of my knowledge, no coaching book or trainer condemns silence in

coaching yet many people who have attended my training courses over the years

have informed me that they are uncomfortable with silence and avoid it as much as

possible. Verbal ‘noise’ is preferable to silence:

Trainer: What’s the difﬁculty with silence in the session?

Trainee: It feels awkward, you should be doing something?

Trainer: Can silence be doing something like allowing the client time to respond

to your question?

Trainee: I’m sure that’s right but silence feels like you’re not helping the person.

You’ve got to justify your fee by moving things along, trying to ﬁnd solutions.

Trainer: So the meaning of silence for you is …?

Trainee: Incompetence.

Trainer: In order to establish your competence or incompetence from your

coachees’ perspective, have you asked them whether they prefer quiet time in

order to reply or are helped by your interruptions while they are thinking?

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Trainee: (sheepishly) No, I haven’t done that. I could ask them.

Trainer: Could or will?

Trainee: Will.

Silence itself is not the problem, but the negative meaning you apply to it is what

then makes it imperative for you to intervene whenever silence occurs. Another

problem with trying to expunge silence from the session is a fundamental one:

Socratic questioning requires the person to think about his answers; in fact, it might

be an issue that he has not thought through before and therefore he may take some

time before he replies (Neenan and Dryden 2004). To ‘start talking to ﬁll the pause

and to rescue the client from the discomfort of this awkward …situation … would

be a mistake … as it interrupts the client’s thought processes and disrupts the

purpose of the Socratic question’ (DiGiuseppe 1991, p.184).

Instead of ﬁlling pauses with emollient chatter, the coach might ask further

questions hoping to ‘nudge’ the person into giving an answer but, again, this tactic

subverts the Socratic process, i.e. each new question undermines the purpose of the

previous one and the person’s thinking time is ‘crowded out’ with several questions

competing for her attention. Also, the person might be experiencing discomfort

from the cognitive dissonance (i.e. psychological tension arises when a person’s

beliefs either contradict each other or her behaviour) triggered by the coach’s

question, e.g. ‘You say you’ll do whatever it takes to deal with this issue yet you

don’t carry out the tasks you’ve agreed to do. So what stops intent and action from

keeping in step?’ The person’s struggle to answer this question might reveal his

block(s) to change (e.g. ‘My head wants the change but my heart is not so sure’). As

DiGiuseppe (1991) comments: ‘It is wise to let the client feel the discomfort. Thirty

seconds or so of silence in a … session may seem like an eternity, but it may be time

well spent’ (p. 184). The person can then seek ways of mending this schism between

head and heart.

Not Listening

The Channel Four news presenter, Jon Snow, once remarked that he is sometimes so

busy preparing his next ‘penetrating’ question that he misses important information

that his interviewee (e.g. a politician) has just disclosed and which could have lead

to a more substantial or revealing interview. A common belief I’ve heard among

coaches is, ‘I’ve got to keep one step ahead in coaching.’ This prompts the question,

‘One step ahead of what?’ Usual replies include ‘anticipating the person’s next

move’, ‘not being caught out when she stops talking’ or ‘being ready to deal with

anything he throws at me’. Unfortunately, these replies demonstrate that the coach

isn’t really listening because his attention is on his own thinking in his

determination not to be ‘caught out’ as an ‘incompetent coach’ (a recurring theme

in my training and supervision of coaches). This self-talk only allows an intermittent

focus on what the person is saying instead of the non-distractible focus that is

required. This kind of focus depends on the coach keeping in step with the client’s

thinking and feeling and not trying to predict its destination thereby mentally racing

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ahead to have an answer ready and waiting when the client ‘arrives’. Not listening

can lead to stark incongruities between the person’s concerns and the coach’s

response:

Coachee: (concluding remarks) So I felt utterly destroyed by his comments when

I had worked so damn hard on the project, when I had put everything I had into it.

Coach: (matter-of-factly) So what’s your next step then?

‘Utterly destroyed’ needs to be explored before steps are taken! As so many

coaching books keep emphasizing that coaching is forward looking, some coaches

might think that all their questions should have this forward focus to them and

thereby neglect here-and-now reﬂection which is equally important—it’s unwise to

advance with ignorance guiding the way. As Downey (2003: 62) observes: ‘Many of

us listen not with the intention to understand but with the intention to respond.’ I

think it takes considerable mental discipline to stay in the moment with the person

in order to understand the full import of what she is saying and resist that almost

compulsive urge to move ahead and have a response, any response, ready the

moment she stops talking.

Providing Progress Summaries

It is good practice to ask coachees to provide regular progress summaries. If the

coach provides the summaries, the danger is inserting into them her view of what

the coachee has learnt or achieved and then he is faced with the choice of whether or

not to agree. It might be difﬁcult in therapy for a psychologically fragile client to

disagree but less likely in coaching with the generally psychologically robust

coachees I see, but the point is still the same.

Insight Isn’t Enough

A moment of insight in the session (‘The penny has just dropped. I can see so

clearly now why I keep going around in circles on this issue’) can seem as if the

person is now on the cusp of change: insight will be quickly followed by sustained

action. Unfortunately, as Haidt (2006) points out: ‘Epiphanies can be life-altering,

but most fade in days or weeks’ (p. 26). Why they ‘fade’ is because there is no

follow through with a sustained action plan—cognition without ignition (Dryden

1985). Some of my coachees have shown an initial enthusiastic surge of activity

ﬂowing from their insights but these activity levels have dropped or stopped as

surge turns into struggle in coping with the vicissitudes of change. Why insight is

insufﬁcient to promote change can start with the coach asking, ‘Will simply

acknowledging that you’re a poor golfer turn you into a good one?’ Once goals are

attained, another question to ask is: ‘Is achieving your goal the same thing as

maintaining it, for example, is getting ﬁt the same as staying ﬁt?’ Achieving and

maintaining goals requires deliberate practice (see above).

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Creativity

Creativity is applying new thinking to old problems. Socratic questioning can be

used in the service of divergent thinking to ‘shake up’ the person’s familiar

problem-solving attempts:

Divergent thinking involves taking risks with your thinking in ways that defy

logic, appear absurd and seem foolish to other people. As such, creative

thinking frequently involves the temporary suspension of critical thinking to

enable new ideas to develop, new associations to form and new perspectives to

emerge in your mind (Neenan and Dryden 2002 p. 131).

I once saw a busy executive who kept on insisting how important exercise was to

him but never took any: ‘I can’t seem to ﬁnd the time to join a gym or get a personal

trainer, things keep on getting in the way.’ Instead of him spending the session

telling me why he couldn’t ﬁnd the time for exercise or me trying to convince him

of its importance, I asked him how he could start exercising right now (I had

ascertained earlier that he had no health problems which would preclude exercise).

He was initially ﬂustered by the directness of the question but suggested ‘maybe

going for a brisk walk’ which we did for thirty minutes. He said that my question

had ‘jumped over every excuse I could think of and forced me to put up or shut up’.

He agreed to go out for brisk 30 min walks at least three times per week as part of

his action plan for change. Some coaches might be wary about using divergent

thinking in case they appear ‘foolish’ (i.e. not rational) in their coachees’ eyes or

because they must be certain of a successful outcome which undermines its purpose.

Some therapists I know want to move into coaching but are constrained by their

‘What if it goes wrong?’ style of thinking. As Newman (2002) suggests, every

negative ‘What if?’ should be balanced by a positive ‘What if it goes right?’

question. The former questions are likely to lead to stasis and discontent while the

latter ones open up the exciting possibility of goal-achievement: ‘Arguably, to

envision a positive outcome is a vital step toward enacting it’ (Newman 2002,

p. 316).

Experiments

Experiments are a very effective way of gathering information, testing hypotheses,

re-evaluating previous conclusions, responding to ‘I don’t knows’; in other words,

moving coachees into new territory. A manager said she overreacted to every

criticism of her but was puzzled as to why she behaved like that until she carried out

an experiment where she held her tongue when being criticized. What she

discovered surprised her: in her mind, not responding put her in a subordinate

position because the other person had won the exchange and therefore ‘had

something over me’; consequently, she might be viewed as ‘weak’ by senior

managers and thereby jeopardize her chances of promotion. Also, she made the

connection between being bullied at school and criticized at work—‘I’m not going

to be pushed around.’ So the costs for her of staying silent were high.

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She was very keen on ‘impression management’, i.e. displaying a range of

positive personae to colleagues and superiors depending on the context. Within the

context of impression management, I asked her:

Coach: Might your overreaction be seen as lack of control or lacking a

proportionate response depending on the circumstances?

Coachee: I worry about that too. I’m sure the impression I’m creating is not the

right one, bit of a loose cannon, that sort of thing. I want to ﬁnd some way of

reacting constructively to criticism only when it’s important to do so and not see

it as being bullied.

Coach: Any ideas how to do that?

Coachee: Maybe develop some rule about when to respond.

Which is what she did. The new rule was based on present, not past, experiences and

focused on the criterion, ‘Does the criticism help me to improve my performance?’

She carried out further experiments to determine not only if she could distinguish

between helpful and unhelpful criticism and not react to the latter kind, but also if she

was implementing the helpful sort. Though it was a struggle at times to keep her old

impulses in check, she felt much more in control and found that so much mental energy

that had previously gone on defending herself to others or brooding was now redirected

to improving her performance and ‘creating a more favourable impression’. The

disadvantages of impression management were discussed such as others becoming

wary of trusting you as they can’t be sure which persona is the person (Sperry 2004).

The coachee hadn’t considered this and went away to ponder the pros and cons of

behavioural consistency versus attempting to create a series of ‘dazzling impressions’.

Making Suggestions

Asking nothing but Socratic questions can be a form of mental torture: a remorseless

extraction of every last ounce of cognitive data to identify and deal with the person’s

presenting problems/concerns. Asking questions is the main but not the only role of a

coach: instruction can be required (e.g. teaching a skill), giving feedback, clarifying

points, pointing out perceived inconsistencies in the person’s thinking, offering

advice, and making suggestions. When considering offering a suggestion, gain the

person’s permission ﬁrst. If he ﬁnds it helpful (‘I like that idea a lot’), you can return

to a Socratic mode and ask in what speciﬁc ways your suggestion is helpful to him in

tackling his concerns. Then I suggest a closed question to concentrate his mind on the

reply: ‘Are you willing to take ownership of my suggestion?’ This is an important

step to take in case he says at the next session, ‘Your suggestion didn’t work!’

Remind him of his ownership of the suggestion and then ask pointedly, ‘How did you

not make your suggestion work?’ (adapted from Hauck 1980).

Conclusion

Socratic questioning is as useful in coaching as it is in CBT. Through my experience

as a cognitive behavioural therapist, coach, and trainer and supervisor of coaches, I

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have explained what I believe to be good Socratic questions and have shown this

questioning style in action in coach–coachee dialogues. To reach and maintain a

high standard of Socratic questioning deliberate practice is required, such as

reviewing audiotapes of sessions to provide a logical basis for the sequencing of the

questions. Experienced or expert coaches may rely too much on intuition in ‘just

knowing’ what to ask, avoid deliberate practice and, consequently, suffer erosion in

their coaching competence, though it may take some time before this becomes

apparent to them. Asking good Socratic questions is an essential skill for all coaches

to have as it encourages your coachees to reﬂect on their thinking and actions in

order to develop new problem-solving perspectives, improve performance, achieve

goals and take their lives in often unanticipated directions.

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