Are We Asking the Right Questions?
Using Inquiry for Great Coaching Results
By Karlin Sloan
Leadership in a corporate setting means answering difficult questions. Am I showing by example
how to lead well? What do I need to change about my behavior to get the best from those around
me? Where can I go to learn what I need to know? What are we doing right and how can we do
more of it?
The best executive coaching focuses leaders on the power of questions and provides the time
and space to answer them.
A recent survey by The Hay Group found that 25% to 40% of Fortune 500 companies now use
executive coaches. As coaching in leadership development has proliferated, it has become even
more important to define what good coaching is – and what it is not.
What Coaching Is Not
Coaching is not traditional consulting. The expert model is the one most often used in consulting.
That is, the consultant is hired for his or her expertise. He is a teacher, not a coach, and he
instructs leaders in ways to approach their business and personal issues. This is one-on-one
consulting, and it can work well when an organization or individual lacks competence in the
consultant’s area of expertise. It also models a traditional, top-down management style.
Didactic consulting doesn’t always work, however. And when it does not, it is usually because
the approach fails to respect the qualities and experience the leader-client brings to the work.
As leadership development expert Marshall Goldsmith says, “Successful people have a huge
need for self-determination, which means that if we don’t feel that we are personally committed to
our own behavior change, we (typically) won’t do it.” The fact is that, without a framework that
respects a leader’s expertise, coaching is much less likely to be effective.
Didactic consulting as a coaching model carries other risks. By its nature, it tends to encourage
dependence on the consultant. This may be good business for consultancies hoping to create
long-term contracts, but it’s not best for the organization or individual hoping to acquire new
expertise. It can also be ineffective if it is not delivered with great charisma and motivational skill
on the part of the consultant.
What Coaching Is
Unlike didactic coaching, the inquiry approach makes respect for the expertise of leader-clients its
starting place. It trusts that those on the receiving end have their own answers and that those
answers are not only important in their own right but the very foundation for productive work with
the coach. The inquiry model is built on a belief that real growth must come from within. It cannot
be grafted onto a leader, as the instructional-consulting model suggests.
Consider the following two real-life engagements.
Sue, VP of operations for a large technology company, said: “I would ask my coach over and over
again what she thought. Her answer was usually, ‘What do you think?’ Or, ‘I’ll tell you after you
give me your own answer.’ The effect was that I began to notice how much I second-guessed
2002 Karlin Sloan, The Propeller Group, Inc.
myself in front of the rest of the executive team. I started remembering to check that behavior
and be more confident in my opinions in the room with my colleagues.”
A leader in a Fortune 500 company recently told me this story. A coach was working with a CEO
on how the CEO could become a more effective communicator and leader. The CEO is a harsh
critic of her own people and has, on more than one occasion, cut someone down in front of the
executive team. The coach told her she was not demonstrating leadership and needed to change
her behavior. He then told her specific language to use with her direct reports. The CEO was
insulted and defensive and fired the coach.
If the coach in the second case had been using the inquiry model rather than the didactic one, he
might have asked the CEO, “Is your approach getting you the performance you want?” The
outcome might have been different.
Excellent coaching is the artful use of questioning, listening and observation. It requires respect
and trust on the part of the coach, not just the client. Trust is communicated because the very act
of questioning and listening is a demonstration of respect.
Coaching through inquiry helps individual leaders use what they’re innately good it. It helps them
build on their strengths, develop flexibility and change-readiness, create awareness of
shortcomings and build commitment to self-development and achievement.
One-on-one coaching is a helping relationship. It is based on the desire of the coach to assist the
client in performing at his or her personal best and the willingness of the client to stretch and
grow. A coach plays the role of confidante, sounding board, champion and mirror. What leader
wouldn’t want someone on his side with whom to discuss creative ideas, doubts, petty irritations
and the performance implications of all of those? Great coaches are, to borrow a phrase from the
psychologist Alice Miller, “enlightened witnesses” to the peaks and perils of leadership.
When coaching by inquiry is most effective, it elicits solutions from the client. It models listening
skill and working with others in a way that empowers others and holds them accountable. It
motivates the client to achieve and builds self-reliance rather than dependence.
When Coaching Works
Coaching may or may not be the right answer for the leadership development needs of your
organization. How do you know?
Here is a short list of problems that one-on-one coaching won’t solve:
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Treating leaders’ psychological problems
Delivering performance messages that should be delivered by senior management
Addressing systemic breakdowns or failures, such as failure of the organization to
address competitor strategies and innovations.
Here are the kinds of problems great coaching can solve:


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Developing leader self-awareness and awareness of one’s effect on people, process and
strategy
Cultivating stronger performance, confidence or presence, and flexibility in the face of
change
Developing problem-solving and decision-making skills
Encouraging responsibility and accountability for results
Integrating new material, assimilating feedback and developing core competencies after
training.
2002 Karlin Sloan, The Propeller Group, Inc.
Coaching should not be applied as a general solution to a vague or undefined problem. It works
best when problems are defined and clearly articulated and when the form of coaching is defined.
Consider the case of Pfizer, whose stated goal is to be the best employer in the U.S.
To achieve it, Dr. Mila Baker, Pfizer’s director of worldwide organizational effectiveness, knew the
company needed a robust and flexible leadership program, one that would give executives and
managers a continuous sense of improvement. At the same time, Dr. Baker needed to move
quickly to develop leaders amid the company’s merger with Warner-Lambert. Dr. Baker’s team
decided to invest in coaching rather than a traditional leadership development curriculum
because coaching could be implemented more quickly and easily.
But at Pfizer, coaching meant different things in different situations, as it should. Dr. Baker’s
team identified four types of coaching to be offered: executive coaching, team leader coaching,
new manager coaching, and specialty coaching.
Pfizer found that coaching contributed to the culture in two critical ways: by making the company
more open and partnership-oriented and by demonstrating the effectiveness of coaching as a
way of developing leadership.
“In the future, we are revising and modularizing the program,” said Dr. Baker. “The same thing we
did with Warner Lambert we are doing with the Pharmacia transition. We are customizing the
program to meet those specific challenges. Our coaching program is a balance of the task
orientation of the company and the introduction of a people orientation. That’s where we make an
impact on the culture.”
Is It Worth it?
A 2001 study of companies that implemented coaching showed an average return on investment
of 5.7 times the investment in a typical executive coaching assignment, or more than $100,000
each.1 Among the benefits cited were improvements in productivity, quality, organizational
strength, executive retention, customer service, and bottom-line profitability.
The act of coaching by inquiry demonstrates critical leadership skills such as active listening,
delivering constructive performance feedback, encouraging confident analysis and decisionmaking, resolving interpersonal conflict and asking mission-critical questions.
It is not magic though. Great coaching by inquiry can have an important effect on individual
leaders and, by extension, part or all of an organization. But it does not create leadership out of a
void. It must be used strategically to address exactly what it is useful for. By asking the right
questions, it begins to give individuals and organizations new focus. Then cultures begin to
change. They become more conducive to creativity and innovation. Communication becomes
smoother and more effective. A new sense of respect is conveyed not just to those within the
organization but to customers and vendors.
What could asking the right questions do for your organization?
1
Executive Coaching Yields Return On Investment Of Almost Six Times Its Cost, Says Study.
Business Wire, Jan. 4, 2001, Jacksonville, Florida
2002 Karlin Sloan, The Propeller Group, Inc.
Author Biography
Karlin Sloan is an entrepreneur and Certified Executive Coach who has developed and delivered
coaching programs for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. She believes that executive and
managerial coaching is a powerful organizational tool when used appropriately -- and counterproductive one otherwise. Ms. Sloan is a member of the Executive Coaching Summit, an
invitation-only group of coaches that act as a think tank and advisory group to the International
Coaching Federation.
Karlin Sloan & Company, based in New York City, is a consulting firm that develops leadership
excellence through executive and management coaching and training. Its client list includes
Corning, MTV Networks, Starcom Mediavest Group, JP Morgan Chase, Columbia University and The
United Nations.
Ms. Sloan has been featured in segments on The Art of Coaching, a Boston-Area television show,
Good Day New York on Fox Channel 5, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The
Chicago Tribune and Fortune Small Business Magazine as an expert on workplace behavior.
2002 Karlin Sloan, The Propeller Group, Inc.