Skills and Questioning Techniques for Mentors and Coaches: A starter
Active Listening
A crucial skill for mentors is the ability to engage in active listening:
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Fully engage with what the person is saying in terms of both content and feelings
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Demonstrate that you are engaged through: body language and feedback – summarising and
checking you have understood.
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Avoid attributing your own interpretations to the person – stick with “I” statements e.g. “I
feel that you are quite angry about this?” rather than “You are quite angry.” The first is
clearly your observation and the person can respond quite neutrally as to whether your
observation is correct whereas the second statement leaves the person in the position of
contesting or agreeing with what you have said.
Providing Challenge and Support:
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Empathise rather than sympathise.
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Test assumptions, motivations and feelings on the part of the learner.
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Keep responsibility with the learner.
Closed and Open Questions
There’s a basic division here between closed and open questions. Open questions generally require
some thinking on the part of the respondent because they need to make choices in replying whereas
closed questions do not.
For example:
Closed: Will you complete the task by the end of the month?
Possible replies: a) Yes. b) No. c) I’m not sure.
Open: When do you think you will be able to complete the task?
Possible replies: a) Well if I do x and ask y to help me out we probably can get it done for Thursday.
b) Since it turned to be more complicated than we thought at first I think it makes sense to break it
into two stages - - - etc. etc.
Closed: Do you think you should be more concerned about how you communicate? / Open: How do
you think you might have communicated more effectively?
Closed: Was she angry with you? / Open: Why do you think she might have reacted in that way?
As a general rule the large majority of the questions you ask should be open-ended in order to help
the learner extend his or her thinking.
Clarifying and Extending
These are questions that give learners the chance to explain and expand their ideas more clearly:
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I’d like you to tell me a bit more about that if you could.
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What’s a good illustration of what you’re talking about?
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Can you put that in another way for me?
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Could you give me another example of what you mean?
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What did that feel like for you?
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How did that sound to you?
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Is that related/ Is there a link to/ what you said earlier about changing your attitude to
pupils?
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What do you think the causes of the problem might be?
Summarising by reflecting back:
This is both a way of checking that you have listened accurately and providing a further opportunity
for the learner to reflect on what they have said.
For example:
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As I understand it what you’re feeling is that - - -?
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Am I right in thinking that - - - ?
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Listening to what you’ve said is it that you saw this as an example of - - ?
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Is this a fair summary of what you’ve told me – that the ?
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What I seem to be picking up listening to you is that you are still quite upset about this?
Challenging and hypothesising
These are questions that attempt to make the learner re-think their position in some way rather
than confining themselves to one particular way of thinking.
For example:
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How do you think that Mrs. Mitchell/your pupils/the parents might have interpreted your
action/ what happened?
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Why do you think this keeps happening?
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Does what you’ve just said challenge in any way what you said in our last session about the
behaviour of your headteacher? (drawing attention to inconsistencies between responses
over time).
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How does what you said about x fit with what you said earlier about your belief in a
collegiate approach? (inconsistencies between values and actions)
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What would need to happen for you to be able to do that/try that out/change the way
things are?
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How do you think a really effective head of department would tackle that?
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Can you think of different ways in which you might approach this issue?