Powerful questions we can define as ones that have a significant, positive impact on the quality and

direction of a person’s thinking about issues important to them. Based on analysis of hundreds of
powerful questions and observing how coaches and mentors use them, the characteristics of a
powerful question include being:
 Personal – it is about them, or about how they connect to an issue
 Resonant – it has an emotional impact
 Acute/Incisive – it gets to the heart of the issue
 Reverberating – it stimulates reflection both in the moment and for some time afterwards
 Innocent – the intent of the questioner is not self-interested or derived from an agenda of
their own
 Explicit – clearly and explicitly expressed
These characteristics make a convenient acronym – PRAIRIE.
Developing your skills in crafting powerful questions
Some simple ways to become more adept at crafting powerful questions are:
Notice when questions you ask have strong impact. Reflect on how the question emerged for you
and compare it to the criteria above.
Ask fewer questions. This allows more time to focus on the quality of the questions you do ask.
When you reflect upon a coaching or mentoring session, remind yourself of questions you asked.
How could you have asked these questions in a way that made them more powerful? What
alternative, powerful questions could you have asked?
Build your own list of powerful questions – your own, from other coaches/mentors and
coaching/mentoring literature, and from elsewhere.
70 Coaching Questions for Managers Using the GROW Model
The GROW Model is the most common coaching framework used by executive coaches. Given its
relative simplicity, many managers have taught themselves the GROW model as a way to structure
coaching and mentoring sessions with their employees. GROW is an acronym that stands for:
 Goal
 (Current) Reality
 Options
 Will (or Way Forward)
Managers use the model to help their employees improve performance, solve problems, make
better decisions, learn new skills, and reach their career goals.
The key to coaching and using the GROW model lies in asking great questions. Coaching
isn’t telling the employee what to do—it’s helping the employee come up with their own answers by
asking the right question at the right time.
Goal
Coaching starts with establishing a goal. It could be a performance goal, a development goal, a
problem to solve, a decision to make, or a goal for the coaching session. For clarity of goal setting as
well as consistency across your team, encourage your employees to use a S.M.A.R.T. goal format,
where the letters stand for:
 Specific
 Measurable
 Attainable
 Realistic
 Timely
Questions to Start a Conversation
A coaching conversation hardly ever follows a nice, neat, sequential four-step path. However, an
arsenal of awesome questions within the GROW framework gives managers the confidence needed
to get started. Eventually, it will become a natural, conversational flow, ebbing back and forth within
the framework.
The following 10 questions can help people gain clarity about their goals:
1. What do you want to achieve from this coaching session?
2. What goal do you want to achieve?
3. What would you like to happen with ______?
4. What do you really want?
5. What would you like to accomplish?
6. What result are you trying to achieve?
7. What outcome would be ideal?
8. What do you want to change?
9. Why are you hoping to achieve this goal?
10. What would the benefits be if you achieved this goal?

Current Reality
This step in the GROW model helps you and the employee gain awareness of the current situation—
what’s going on, the context, and the magnitude of the situation.
The key is to take it slow and easy with your questions. It’s not a rapid-fire interrogation. Let the
employee think about the question and reflect on their answers. Use active listening skills, as this is
not the time to jump to solution generation or share your own opinions.
The following 20 questions are designed to clarify the current reality:
1. What is happening now (what, who, when, and how often)? What is the effect or result of this?
2. Have you already taken any steps towards your goal?
3. How would you describe what you did?
4. Where are you now in relation to your goal?
5. On a scale of one to 10, where are you?
6. What has contributed to your success so far?
7. What progress have you made so far?
8. What is working well right now?
9. What is required of you?
10. What would be the reasons you haven’t reached that goal already?
11. What do you think is stopping you?
12. What do you think was really happening?
13. Do you know other people who have achieved that goal?
14. What did you learn from _____?
15. What have you already tried?
16. How could you turn this around this time?
17. What could you do better this time?
18. If you asked ____, what would they say about you?
19. On a scale of one to 10, how severe/serious/urgent is the situation?
20. If someone said/did that to you, what would you think/feel/do?

Options
Once you both have a clear understanding of the situation, the coaching conversation turns to what
the employee can do to reach their goal.
These 20 questions are designed to help the employee explore options and generate solutions:
1. What are your options?
2. What do you think you need to do next?
3. What could be your first step?
4. What do you think you need to do to get a better result (or closer to your goal)?
5. What else could you do?
6. Who else might be able to help?
7. What would happen if you did nothing?
8. What has worked for you already? How could you do more of that?
9. What would happen if you did that?
10. What is the hardest/most challenging part of that for you?
11. What advice would you give to a friend about that?
12. What would you gain/lose by doing/saying that?
13. If someone did/said that to you what do you think would happen?
14. What's the best/worst thing about that option?
15. Which option do you feel ready to act on?
16. How have you tacked this/a similar situation before?
17. What could you do differently?
18. Who do you know who has encountered a similar situation?
19. If anything was possible, what would you do?
20. What else?
Will (Or Way Forward)
This is the last step in the GROW model. In this step, the coach checks for commitment and helps the
employee establish a clear action plan for next steps. Here are 20 questions to help probe for and
achieve commitment:
1. How are you going to go about it?
2. What do you think you need to do right now?
3. Tell me how you’re going to do that.
4. How will you know when you have done it?
5. Is there anything else you can do?
6. On a scale of one to 10, what is the likelihood of your plan succeeding?
7. What would it take to make it a 10?
8. What obstacles are getting in the way of success?
9. What roadblocks do you expect or require planning?
10. What resources can help you?
11. Is there anything missing?
12. What will one small step you take now?
13. When are you going to start?
14. How will you know you have been successful?
15. What support do you need to get that done?
16. What will happen (or, what is the cost) of you NOT doing this?
17. What do you need from me/others to help you achieve this?
18. What are three actions you can take that would make sense this week?
19. On a scale of one to 10, how committed/motivated are you to doing it?
20. What would it take to make it a 10?
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is one of the oldest organizations in the industry leading
the direction of the coaching field. In fact, ICF has established what they believe are core
competencies and ethical practices for which coaches must have to effectively facilitate the coaching
process.
One of these key skills the ICF suggests a coach has is the ability to evoke awareness in the Coachee.
Evoking awareness means, “[to] facilitate the [Coachee's] insight and learning by using tools and
techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor, or analogy” (ICF, 2021). However, what
I have come to understand as a Coach, I must first identify and understand the Coachee’s “state of
knowing” in relationship to the Coachee's values, beliefs, perceptions, and desired outcome.
States of Knowing
In my study, Understanding Help Seeking Behavior in Married African American Couples (Reid, 2019),
I discuss the literature and our current understanding of the definition of awareness. For the
purposes of this post, I will summarize below what I discovered in my study and provide the
connection to how coaches can effectively evoking awareness. Below is a direct quote:
“Schipper (2014) proposed awareness can be described as a type of knowledge, including a lack of
knowledge pertaining to a currently existing object or event. This definition falls in line with how
awareness is described in other studies. For example, according to Atherton (2013), when
researchers and experts speak about awareness, they are referring to what people do or do not
know, meaning a person’s knowledge or the knowledge gained. Atherton defined this type of
awareness as self-awareness of knowledge. However, there is also knowledge itself, meaning being
aware of the type of knowledge needed (Atherton, 2013). Based on Atherton’s definition of
awareness, Grime and Dudley (2014) proposed four states of knowledge which fits into two self-
awareness categories: Category A: No self-awareness of knowledge where a person can possess
knowledge about something, but not realize she or he has this information
(i.e., unconscious competence), or lack knowledge about something and not realize knowledge is
lacking (unconscious incompetence); Category B: Self-awareness of knowledge where a person can
possess knowledge about something and realize it (i.e., conscious competence), or be aware
knowledge or information is lacking (conscious incompetence). Table 1 illustrates these four states
of knowing proposed by Grime and Dudley.”

States of Knowing
Source: (Grime & Dudley, 2014, p. 166)
For Coaches, what does this mean when it comes to evoking awareness? Simply put:
1. The Coach must understand and clarify the Coachee’s agenda or goals, ask curious questions,
challenge with care, and understand the challenges the Coachee is experiencing (self-imposed,
real, imagined, internally, or externally).
2. The Coach must understand where the Coachee’s awareness or knowledge is currently resting
to effectively partner with the Coachee on how to evoke awareness and make objective
decisions.
3. The state of knowing the Coachee falls in will drive how the coach asks questions, and what
questions to ask.
Therefore, to evoke awareness, the coach must first identify the Coachee’s state of knowing (i.e.,
what the Coachee is aware of knowing and not knowing about themselves and the situation, agenda
or challenge presented) through the initial curious questioning process (e.g., confirming the agenda
and session agreement). Based on the Coachee’s state of knowing, the Coach can then ask the most
powerful questions, implement activities, and challenge the client’s perceptions to produce an “aha”
moment (i.e., awareness) to a “ta-da” moment (i.e., physical action or behavioural response). So,
how can Coaches evoke awareness based on the Coachee’s state of knowledge:
When the Coachee is unaware of what she/he/they know (unconscious competence):
 Focus on how the Coachee handled past experiences,
 Focus on the Coachee’s strengths,
 Focus on how to use known resources in new or untapped ways.
When the Coachee is unaware she/he/they do not know (unconscious incompetence):
 Give concrete examples, metaphors, and analogies,
 Offer data, resources, books, videos, or podcasts,
 Use activities to experiment with new ideas or concepts to create opportunities for building
awareness.
When a Coachee is aware of what she/he/they know (conscious competence):
 Focus on choices available and how to use or maximize those options,
 Focus on how what is known aligns with values, options, and motivation,
 Focus on how what is known aligns with next steps, actions, and/or behavioural responses.
When a Coachee is aware of what she/he/they do not know (conscious incompetence):
 Brainstorm ideas and concepts of known experiences and information and decide how they can
be applied to reach desired outcomes,
 Apply a deductive reasoning process through curious questioning,
 Hold space for the Coachee to talk through thoughts, feelings, and experiences,
 Dive deeper into the meaning of values, beliefs, perceptions, and how knowledge has been
previously applied,
 Help the Coachee identify the relationships between values, beliefs, and desired outcomes.
Finally, experiment. Every Coachee is unique. As Coaches, we must flow with the Coachee in the
moment. So, take this into account when considering the Coachee’s state of knowledge. You may
find that you can use a combination of the approaches to evoke awareness. Nevertheless, the
guidance provided above can work well when a Coach is able to confirm the Coachee’s current state
of knowledge.