Transcript
LUCY
When I deliver coach development courses, people say, oh, what's the deal with questions? It's like, questions are great. But they have to be natural, and they have to come from a curious place unless you want it to be a tell question. So for an example, I had a coach. And I talked about questions. And I don't think I'd explained it very well. And he rang me up, and he said, I tried that question thing that you said, Lucy at the weekend, and it didn't work I didn't say anything. And I said, all right. That's interesting. What did you ask? And he said, well, I went over to them, and I said, do you think that is good enough?
[LAUGHTER]
And I thought, he's not done anything wrong. That's-- I've told him to open his halftime talk with a question. That is what he did. That is-- he's followed that instruction directly. So questions can be aggressive. Questions can be tell. It's all interwoven. I think because of my tendency to lean towards questions, I can fall into being too empathetic and trying to guide that person somewhere. And if I really genuinely want to be candid, I have to drip in a bit of tell.
STUART
So I suppose-- this is something I've reflected on for myself, actually, as coach developer because I was slightly-- I've got a tendency to tell, definitely. And my big development area-- my big work on has been kind of moving away from that and kind of providing that space, designing the space to allow people to explore and develop, providing using questions as a means-- essentially as a means to draw attention, raise awareness of something, and then and then invite information through that question. But I've found that there's been times when I just can't get there with somebody. That just can't get through. And I usually put it down to a failure of myself to be able to ask the right questions, or ask the questions in the right way. But what you're saying is, actually, sometimes, it just isn't possible to keep going. And actually, keeping going would be worse. So that's where you might have to then go, what about that? Even that's a question. But you might be more directive.
LUCY
Yeah.
STUART
It could be couched as a question. But-- or you could say, you could do this. It's still a question. I'm trying to think about how good--
LUCY
Yeah.
STUART
But you can basically propose something, or you can suggest something, as opposed-- interestingly, I always try and phrase it that way rather than just say, do this.
LUCY
Yeah.
STUART
But either way, it's still framed as a question. But the point is that what we're trying to do is to invite somebody to consider something.
LUCY
YES.
STUART
Now, that's-- is that what you're talking about? That sort of-- it's more didactic in the sense of you are giving somebody something rather than just allow them to sort of arrive at something. But not it's not an instruction, necessarily.
LUCY
Yes. So you wouldn't give them a solution. So if I said to you, Stew, you talk too much.
STUART
It wouldn't be the first time.
LUCY
Stop talking. And I have a certain response. If I said to you, at the beginning of the session, you said you wanted to hear what the athletes thought, you spoke for 26 of the 30 minutes. That's a statement of fact. I'm telling you something but encouraging you to have a reflection. And I'm sure that's not the best example that could be out there, but it's something I'm trying to be braver at because previously, I would have attacked that conversation perhaps with-- so how do you think it went? Did you hear much from them? What questions did you ask? And we would go round and round. And if you had no self-awareness of how much you spoke, actually, we could get to a more meaningful discussion quicker if I'd just given you that piece of information that I had in my head rather than falling into that question pantomime of trying to get you to guess what's in my head because that's not a real conversation. That's fake. That's questioning for question's sake. You're not genuinely curious, whereas--
STUART
Is that disingenuous? It's somewhere between disingenuous and ruinous empathy, isn't it?
LUCY
So on that depends on your motivation. So am I doing that to protect myself because I don't want you to hate me because I've been horrid to you? For is that me worrying about you losing all of your self-confidence and self esteem because I've said something to you that's hard? So it's-- where does my motivation lie as the person who's having that conversation?
STUART
OK. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, so just-- let me just follow into that example that you use. There's two examples you've just given us. And I'd like to go further into them because I think they're interesting stories, and I think they can pull out a little bit of what we talked about. So in the case of earlier, when you said, I asked that question, and it didn't work. And so you've got this individual who's basically gone to halftime, and said, do you think that was good enough? I dread to think what they would have said previously.
LUCY
Well, I don't think they were--
STUART
That wasn't good enough.
LUCY
They weren't invited to speak at halftime. It we would be-- they were presented with information about what had happened. He wanted to encourage some reflection, and some ownership, and some drive, and some motivation and then tried to do that with a question. It came from a good place, but it wasn't-- it still wasn't a curious question. It was a question, but it wasn't a curious question because he didn't really want them to tell him. He wasn't genuinely interested in whether they thought it was good enough.
STUART
He wanted get a message across.
LUCY
He wanted to say that wasn't good enough. And he wanted to spark something in them to do something.
STUART
And he had the exact opposite response.
LUCY
Well, they just had silence. So I couldn't tell you how they performed afterwards. I feel like they won the game, but I think-- I don't know whether that had any bearing on anything whatsoever.
STUART
What did you then-- what did you say in that scenario with that individual who basically said that? What was your response when they said it didn't work?
LUCY
So that's where I was saying, having a conversation about, what were you trying to get from it, which is how I know that he was trying to put something under them and spark--
STUART
What the intent was.
LUCY
Yeah. Why? Why did you ask that question? Because my instruction to him was very direct. Let's try it. Just try it. Go on. Try it this time. Try it next week. Try it. Open with a question. See what happens. They will talk to you. Because he was saying they never-- this new approach doesn't work because they never speak. Just try it. Just try it. And that's was a shortcoming of my explanation as to why you'd ask a question. I just told him to ask question. That is what he did. Yeah.
STUART
So he didn't have the why.
LUCY
He didn't know why he was asking a question.
STUART
So that's your reflection there.
LUCY
Because he didn't-- he felt like he was asking that question and was expecting a reply but didn't really know why a question would have got more conversation than a statement.