Coaching is not an exact science but rather an art form. Life and business coaching have come increasingly into vogue in the past decade and the benefits that arise from such coaching are derived from the skill of the coach and his or her ability to develop and ask well-targeted questions that open up new possibilities for the client.
The first person you communicate with is yourself. To improve your life, you must start by improving your communication with yourself. Many people are unable to do this without some help and hence the evolution of the Life Coach, who has a major part to play in helping individuals communicate better with themselves.
The quality of your life flows from the quality of your communication. The quality of your communication determines the results you get. If you wish to improve your life, or the life of a client, you must improve the results you achieve. How do you improve the results? You do this by improving your communication. How do you improve your communication? You do this by improving the questions you ask of yourself or your client.
If you were to consider the following question what would your answer be? “What is the one thing I could do, that if I did it, would improve my life going forward?”
This question seems simple yet it is very difficult for some people to answer. To help people get beyond this, the writer has developed a set of effective questions to overcome this difficulty.
The questioning technique goes under the acronym “I GROW SMART”.
I stands for Issue Identification
G stands for Goal Setting
R stands for Reality Check
O stands for Options
W stands for Will to Execute
S stands for a simple Specific statement
M stands for Meaningful, measurable and met with determination
A stands for Achievable from the client’s perspective and includes specific Actions
R stands for Realistic and within the capabilities of the individual
T stands for Timeframe with an agreed date and time of completion
This very famous quote personifies the role and challenges facing all Life Coaches: “In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door is there and the key is in your head. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open, except yourself.” Krishnamurti
What this quote is saying, is that the answers are within the person. The difficulty is in fact in getting the answers out of the person. Asking effective questions will release the valve that allows the answers to flow from the client in a voyage of self discovery.
You, the coach are simply the conduit that facilitates this expunging of self-knowledge by your client
and ultimately the garnering of life changing focus and self actualization. Questions are the keys to helping yourself and helping other people explore answers and get successful outcomes.