The Myth of the Perfect Coaching Question

Why you don’t need a massive list of complicated questions to unlock your team’s potential.

Have you ever found yourself stalling out before a coaching conversation because you didn’t know exactly what to ask?

You want to guide your team member, but you start overthinking it. What if I ask the wrong thing? What if the conversation dries up? How do I know which question to ask next?

This fear of not having the “perfect” question is one of the single biggest reasons leaders avoid coaching altogether. We wait until we feel like experts, and in the meantime, our teams suffer. But here’s the truth: coaching isn’t about showcasing your intelligence through complicated questions. It’s simply about coming alongside someone and helping them think.

3 Key Takeaways

• Don’t wait for perfection: You don’t need a list of complicated questions to be a great coach. Coaching is about being a thinking partner, not an advisor.
• Stop solving elementary problems: When you immediately give answers, you train your team to stop thinking for themselves.
• Embrace simple questions (and silence): The most powerful coaching question is often a simple, three-word prompt: “What else?”

The Trap of the “Elementary Problem Solver”

I hear it from leaders all the time: “Jono, my team keeps coming back to me with elementary problems. Why can’t they just resolve this stuff themselves?”

My response is always the same: “Do you solve it for them?”

And invariably, their answer is yes.

That is where the cycle begins. If your team knows you have all the answers, they are naturally inclined to bypass their own brainpower and come straight to you. It’s easier, faster, and risk-free for them. But by constantly giving advice, we create a team environment where people don’t have to think for themselves.

“By just answering the question and by just giving advice, we create a whole bunch of people that don’t have to think for themselves.”

Enter the “Thinking Partner” Modality

Coaching is one of the absolute best natural leadership disciplines you can learn. But to do it well, you have to transition out of consulting and advising.

Instead, you need to become their thinking partner.

As a thinking partner, you aren’t there to solve the puzzle for them. You’re there to help them unpack the journey they need to go on. The human mind is an amazing place, but it needs space, structure, and a sounding board to do its best work.

Your job is simply to provide that space.

“Coaching is that ability to come alongside the client, whether that’s a team member, your boss, or a customer, and kind of be their thinking partner, not tell them what to do.”

The Power of the Simple Question

So, how do you actually do this without a list of clever questions? You keep it incredibly simple.

You don’t need a complex framework. Some of the most effective questions you can ask in a coaching session are basic, low-pressure prompts:

• What’s working?
• What’s not working?
• Where do we need to innovate?
• What is a great question you would want to hear from me right now to help you take the next step?

But my absolute favorite question to ask when chunking down an issue is just three words:

“What else?”

When you feel like they haven’t quite unpacked the whole story, don’t try to fill the space with a complicated follow-up. Just ask, “What else?” And then, this is the hard part, learn to be quiet. Don’t pad the question. Don’t qualify it. Don’t try to make it comfortable. Ask the question, lean back, and let them think.

If they tell you there is nothing else, that’s completely fine too. You don’t have to force it. But you will be amazed at what people discover when you give them just a few extra seconds of silence to dig a little deeper.

Start Asking, Stop Solving

If you are looking for specific questions to tackle a unique scenario, go ahead and ask an AI tool to give you a few ideas. There is nothing wrong with that!

But don’t just run through them like a robotic checklist. Use the ones that feel natural to you.

At the end of the day, you do not have to be a master interrogator to be a brilliant coach. You just have to show up, ask simple questions, and let your people unpack their own thoughts.

Stop trying to have all the answers, and start helping your team find theirs.

Enjoy the journey.

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Thanks for reading The Forged Leader!
This article was unpacked further in a recent Monday Myth Check.
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