Stage 2 is where we start to appreciate the value of questions in the coaching process:
questioning is the most important skill in a coach’s portfolio. They will not be the sort of questions where there is one right answer being sought, rather they are forms of questions that open up new channels of thinking for the young person.
Shifting from a problem to a solution focus involves reframing. More on that below, but first let’s address one of the challenges of working with young people, the fact that we may at times have to face negativity, lack of motivation and a reluctance to share information.
Open questions are generally better than closed questions in this respect because they require a fuller answer. For instance, the response to ‘Did you have a good weekend?’ can only be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ unless the person chooses to tell you more.
Whereas ‘What did you do at the weekend?’ invites more information. There are also subtle ways of enhancing open questions so that they gently probe a bit further, as in the following alternatives:
Young person: ‘I’m not bad at English, but I’ve never been any good at Maths.’
Coach: ‘What’s behind that?’
‘Where might that have begun?’
‘How long have you thought like that?’
‘When did you start thinking like that?’
Or:
‘What specifically is that about?’
‘How exactly did that start?’
There are several things to keep in mind that influence the effectiveness of questions. Firstly, the formula needs to be a mix of curiosity and empathy. The curiosity is not a nosiness to know for yourself; rather it is a curiosity to find the keys that will open up new channels of thought for the young person. The empathy should not tip over to the ‘Oh dear’ of sympathy; rather it is a genuine concern for the well-being of the young person.
Secondly, it’s the way you say it! It’s about remembering Stage 1 and the importance of body language in effective communication, keeping the rapport going, being sensitive to clues that give you an indication that the form of question is useful for the young person, trying another tack if you suspect otherwise.
Thirdly, you’ll notice that the questions do not refer specifically to ‘not being any good at Maths’. That would be reinforcing the limiting belief; it’s the seeds of the solution you’re looking for rather than focusing on the problem. In that respect, whenever you get a ‘never been any good at ...’ comment, a really good question can be:
‘Never, never ever?’
With the patience you’ve learned from practising active listening you’ll be more prepared to wait for answers. Some coaching questions take more time to process than questions requiring straightforward factual answers. It’s fine to repeat this if you get a quick response that suggests the young person hasn’t thought about it long enough, though don’t jump in too soon. And you could do so in a light-hearted challenging way as long as you have the rapport to do so:
Stage 2 – Raising Awareness
105
‘You’ve never, ever been good at Maths?’
As Paul Jackson and Mark Mckergow (2007) remind us, no ‘problem’ happens all the time. The likelihood is that there’ll be some occasion, sometime, somewhere, however small, when the young person has had an experience of ‘being good at Maths’, and when they recall it, there you will find the counter towards the solution.
So once you’ve found the ‘one time’ you can turn the negative to a positive, and shift for the first small step:
‘What exactly were you doing when you were being good at Maths?’
Thinking Space 8
Ann G. recognizes awareness overlaps the formal boundaries of a coaching session.
During the initial welcoming chit-chat, walking into the room, fixing a drink, she will be looking for ways to match for rapport, listening for any patterns of speech, feeling her way into the relationship. She’s also conscious that thinking goes on after a coaching session has ended. Processing new ideas and ways of thinking takes time.
Awareness isn’t instant: it more likely comes after a long period of unconscious processing to accommodate new concepts into a person’s mental map. Ann also knows she needs to reflect on a session, checking on her own reactions, thinking through the language to check for the seeds of a solution. So when she meets the young person the next time, she can be alert to any pick up any signs of changed thinking, and will have thought about any adjustments she needs to make to her own approach.
Jackson and McKergow (2007: 81) also suggest questions are useful for their stage of Affirming what is Helping. A compliment can be wrapped up in a question in order to avoid sounding patronising. So this could be a way of helping a young person recognize what they do well in one subject to transfer it to progress in another:
‘How are you learning in English so well?’
Or to transfer skills from one domain to another:
‘How are you organizing your time so well that you do all that training?’
‘When did you learn to relate to other people so well?’
‘How do you concentrate so well when the shop is busy?’
As well as seeing questions as keys to open up new channels of thought for a young person, they are also the signposts to the first small steps. Small steps come about from noticing what works, and need to be something that can be achieved
straight away. As you’ll see in the next section, for a young person, noticing what works means first raising awareness of the unique and individual way they do their learning.
Metacognition
As you saw in Chapter 2, there is learning, and there is also learning about learning.
One aspect of our human evolution that makes us unique in the animal kingdom is that we have self-awareness, we can think about how we think.
You will also have seen in Chapter 2 the extensive range of ideas about how people learn: 71 models of learning styles identified by the Coffield Review, with 13 of those being major models. Indeed, there can hardly be a school in the land that has not been exposed to these ideas in some shape or form; there is a proliferation of training courses, questionnaires and internet resources available.
So many resources, in fact, that you may have found it confusing to try and identify their usefulness and relevance for your particular context. So many models of learning styles also, that this is not the place to explore each and every one. Rather, it is better to seek to deepen our understanding of the practical use of certain theories of learning, while at the same time not being constrained by a notion that one size fits all, or one model has all the answers. The other important aspect is that we are seeking to give young people a language to understand how they learn; an understanding that will help them realize their potential. If a model can do this, it will be a practical test of its usefulness as an explanatory framework. It can also be part of our role to cut through the confusion and aim for clarity, as David Hargreaves (2005: 4) reminds us:
In many schools there is also no agreed vocabulary in which teachers might talk with their students about their learning, even though this is at the very heart of professional practice.