Before starting the coaching conversation, make sure you have a coaching agreement for the session with the coachee.

Powerful questions the can be asked during the above stages:

Will:

  • What is the goal you want to achieve or the problem to solve?
  • What does it mean for you?
  • Where do you rate this goal at from the 1 – 10 range (1 least, 10 highest)?
  • How will this goal help you personally or professionally?
  • How do you feel after achieving the goal?
  • How does your performance change after achieving the goal?
  • What does success look like with respect to this goal?
  • What can you do to achieve the goal?
  • What will change if you achieve this goal?
  • What will not change if you achieve this goal?
  • How will this goal help your future?

Opportunities:

  • What are the positive forces you see to achieve this goal?
  • Who around you can support you to achieve this goal?
  • What environmental factors help you to achieve this goal?
  • How do you feel when you find a great opportunity that helps you achieve your goal?
  • Can you arrange the opportunities you identified as per their probability of occurrence?
  • What is in your control to use the prioritised opportunities?
  • What or who can influence you to use those opportunities?
  • If you have only one way to achieve the goal, what would that one way be?

Negatives:

  • What are the blockers you see that pushes you away from your goal?
  • Who around you might trouble you to block you?
  • What are negative environmental factors?
  • How do you feel when you see these blockers occur on your way?
  • Who can control these blockers?
  • Who can influence these blockers?
  • If there is a way to unblock yourself from these blockers, what is that?
  • How are you blocking yourself from reaching your goal?
  • How do you feel when all these blockers disappear?
  • Can you prioritise these blockers?

Derive actions:

  • What do you see at this moment to do to achieve your goal based on opportunities and negatives?
  • What actions can you immediately start with to achieve your goal?
  • Let’s imagine it’s a year from now and you have accomplished your goal, what steps have you taken to achieve it?
  • Suppose, you had all the information you needed, what would be your immediate next step?
  • If you were at your best, what would be your immediate action?
  • What could you do if you did not care what other people thought?
  • Imagine having a chat with a wisest person you can think of, what would they tell you to do?
  • From where you are now, what would be the first step to achieve your goal?
  • What does the timeline look like to complete the actions you identified?
  • What will you do in the next 24 hours/1 week/1 month?

Evaluate:

  • How can you assess the progress of your goal based on the actions you did so far?
  • What is achieved and what is not?
  • What did work?
  • What did not work?
  • How do you feel right now?
  • How are you blocking your own progress?
  • Let’s imagine you have achieved your goal, from your current position how far is that situation?
  • Who is accountable to evaluate your progress?
  • Who can influence or control your progress?
  • What changes you see to the opportunities and negatives at this point of time?
  • How confident are you with respect to the direction to achieve your goal at this point?

Revise:

  • What did you learn from the options you worked up on so far?
  • What changes you would like to make to the opportunities and negatives in order to make them work?
  • How did you feel when something did not work in your plan?
  • How confident are you with the current plan of action?
  • What changes you would like to make to your action plan to make it work better?
  • Who can help/influence/support you?
  • If you were to start a new plan afresh, what would it look like?
  • What is blocking you in coming up with a new plan if the existing plan does not help?
  • What was the most challenging task you did in your existing plan and what was the result?

Above steps can be used by coach in a series of conversations with the coachee. The steps WILL, OPPORTUNITIES, NEGATIVES, DERIVE ACTIONS can be done in one conversation and give the coachee time to work on the action plan. Before closing the coaching session, let coachee commit for a timeline to execute the action plan. After that have a next conversation (coaching session) to run the steps EVALUATE and REVISE.