Coaching Questioning Strategies

[Virtual Presenter] According to the presentation: Slide 1: Good morning everyone, and welcome to our presentation on Coaching Questioning Strategies. Today, we will be discussing how to strive for impactful coaching conversations. Slide 2: Let's start by discussing the importance of coaching discovery. By enhancing your rep’s skills and knowledge, focusing less on examination and more about listening, validating your observations, encouraging reflection, guiding reps to own their development, and helping a rep step beyond their comfort zone, you can achieve impactful coaching conversations. Slide 3: Now, let's talk about the different types of questions that can be used in coaching. These include clarifying, reflective, confirming, motivations, direct, exploratory, analytical, and empowering questions. Slide 4: One questioning strategy that can be used for impactful coaching conversations is the Iceberg. This is a familiar questioning strategy that can help you achieve your coaching goals. Slide 5: The Iceberg questioning strategy has three layers: the tip, the surface, and the core. These layers represent the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd layers of questioning, respectively. Slide 6: Layer one is all about establishing a common understanding. This can be achieved by recalling facts, describing goals and why, and recognizing behaviors. Some questions that can be used in this layer include: Can you describe the steps you considered when...? Can you share more on what you recall from...? Can you help me understand what...? Slide 7: Layer two is all about encouraging reflection. This can be achieved by inspiring reps to explore their actions, helping the rep evaluate their effectiveness, and unlocking their level of self-awareness. Some questions that can be used in this layer include: What do you think is holding you back from...? What do you believe led to that reaction...? What do you want to see from your...? Slide 8: Layer three is all about connecting to motivation. This can be achieved by guiding reps to solve the gap on their own,confirming why taking action is important, and understanding the consequence/impact of not acting. Some questions that can be used in this layer include: How will these actions impact you? What is the difference you want to make with these actions we’ve discussed? What will happen if...? Slide 9: Finally, let's talk about clarifying and confirming questions. These questions can help navigate the conversations, happen throughout the coaching session, and allow you to pivot and transition based on the situation. Some examples of these questions include: Did I understand you correctly when you said...? Is there anything else you would like to add...? Could you elaborate on...? Thank you for attending our presentation on Coaching Questioning Strategies. We hope that you have learned some valuable information that will help you achieve impactful coaching conversations..

[Audio] As a coach we must encourage their employees to step beyond their comfort borders and instill confidence by seeing more in their team than they themselves might see Help employees reach goals just beyond their peak. This will encourage a plateaued employee's belief that they in fact can achieve breakthroughs and improve their performance Reinforce that we do have training available to us to support us in being more effective with our coaching questions Slide Objective: An inform slide to reinforce the importance of Discovery and the effort that goes into understanding and learning about your reps Transition Now that we have a common understanding of the importance Discovery plays in our coaching, let's look at where our group tends to focus on our questions.

[Audio] All the different types of coaching questions you can ask a rep and we organized them to help you be more effective.. Why we did this. More impactful coaching conversation and easier to observe.. Tie with the direct benefits we got from the Iceberg strategy with having the layered questions and help categorize the questions and focus our efforts Remember, whatever questions you choose to ask, the most important ingredient in a great coaching session is for the coach to listen, and through listening be engaged and interested in the employee and what they are saying. It has been estimated that, for an effective coaching session, a manager should only be speaking for 10% of the time, and listening for the other 90%, making the sessions completely focused on the employee (3). If you are just asking questions to tick boxes without listening to the responses and responding appropriate in turn, then coaching sessions are doomed to fail before they've even begun. Timing – 3 minutes Slide Objective: An animated slide to inform and illustrate where our calls tend to be focused in and how we need to shift to a more balanced approach long term to support our success with customers Facilitator Notes - It's important to practice describing how the balance is illustrated following the animation of the slide Reinforce from our original EWV training, we learned about different types of questions to support our sales calls Mention, to the audience that based on our observations, we have a tendency to have our calls lean towards the more direct, confirming, and clarifying types…. LV: when we speak to our customers we should also build relationship, uncover value and explore AS WELL AS confirmation etc. LV: Keep the balance between the types of questions – end results to ask enough/the right questions to achieve all of the above GG: we are using more of (left) but (right) influence customer more LV: keep balance between approach – many MWers are/tend to Be aware of your blind spot Mention, what we need to do is shift our balance from those types to one's that are more focused around understanding needs and where value and influence are located GG: strategically decide to Mention that all questions are relevant and are needed to support our interactions with customers Before moving on, confirm understanding with the team Transition To help support the balance shift in our questioning, we've created a easy to remember strategy for supporting your discovery efforts Definitions referenced below if needed : Not to be presented unless prompted by questions Clarify Questions - Simple Questions to verify facts Relationship Building Questions - Gets the conversation started, build credibility and trust throughout the call Confirming Questions - Confirming questions are designed to check that your customer understands what you've said Direct Questions - Fact gathering and more specific Explore Questions - Ask goal related questions to then link how MathWorks can help achieve it Value Based Questions - Reveals new information or gets the customer to think above and beyond the initial pain.

[Audio] We can categorize them just like the iceberg. Timing – 1 minutes Slide Objective: This slide is a transition slide into the three steps. Emphasize that we are going breakdown our Questioning Strategy into three easy steps to help with the understanding and learning Facilitator Notes Mention how with our past EWV training we focused on learning different types of questions Today, we will help expand our thinking by applying what we learned to dig deeper into finding the customers business pain by developing a questioning strategy Introduce to the team the idea of "The Iceberg" and how it will help us remember how to use our discovery more effectively Ask the team if anyone can guess what the questioning strategy we may be referring to in the illustration on the slide Transition Let's take a deeper look at what we mean by "The Iceberg".

[Audio] Timing – 2 minutes Slide Objective: This slide is to introduce the questioning layers to the team and should be kept at a high level Facilitator Notes Review each layer with the team – keep at a very high level Reinforce how we need to "drill down" deeper into the types of questions that are located at the Core Reinforce that it's less about building a strategy with a number of different question types but more of one focused on using all questions from the Tip to the Core Transition We'll now drill deeper into each of the layers to learn more about the purpose and types of questions are asked in each layer. Have your questions out and ready that you brought to the CFE… Let's start with Layer One – The Tip.

[Audio] Recall clear facts about each situation Describe their goals and why Understand their current habits and behaviors Can you describe the steps you considered when handling the customer's objection to price? Can you share more on what you recall from the customer's background that… Slide Objective: This slide introduces the first layer of coaching questions and how to better understand your rep Facilitator Notes Once you have gathered information through layer one questions you can engage the rep on how to develop and improve Once you both have a common understanding of "what is happening", you will move towards an understanding of "why things are happening" They must be used in combination with the other layers of questions that allow you to identify the beliefs, behaviors, and motivations of your reps These questions expose only initial information, they do not give a more thorough understanding of their reps Additional Coaching Points Often, the majority of coaches predominantly ask first-level questions There's an important point about first-level questions: they are necessary, but not enough Additional Questioning Examples What challenges are you struggling with now? What can you infer from Can you describe how… How would you define… Describe what happens when… Transition Some of us may stop here at the first layer. It's the next layer, the Surface, that enables the coach to accelerate the coaching process and identify where challenges may be hidden.

[Audio] Interpret what their actions need to be given a new outcome Draw connections across ideas Able to see a different perspective to find a way forward What do you think is holding you back from doing "XYZ" more consistently? Why do you think discouraged the customer that led to their reaction… What do you want to see from your customer to have a better relationship? Our goal is to be more reflective in nature and how to solve the challenge they are facing themselves, get closer to outcomes.. Really guiding them by asking these reflective.. An example would be.. You know you've been successful if they are to … Now that the rep and coach understand the goals and the reasoning behind them, then you can then begin to formulate a plan based on these understandings Information learned in Layer One (understanding) needs to be applied in future questioning layers After the rep remembers and establishes their goals, understands the reasoning for their goals, and applies their knowledge of their goals to their current state, they can begin analyzing the outcome of their new decisions Emotional or "I feel" dimension – it overrides your I think dimension – why what you feel will override what you think Through reflective questions, the rep is given an opportunity to maintain objectivity and a level of emotional distance from their own actions and behavior, allowing them a more subjective perspective which can prove beneficial to development and change What are the pro's and con's of your solution How would you demonstrate - How would you solve What would be the result if How do you think your you would have answered that same question? Background & Emphasis If Needed: This second layer will help you explore more about what you discovered in the first layer by asking reps their perspectives It helps the coach understand the rep's viewpoints Be sure to listen carefully to each response you get because your rep will often quickly reveal triggers to further pursue Transition The challenge for us it to get to the third layer and what impacts the rep…let's discuss what we mean by getting to the "Core".

[Audio] The gap being the distance between the current behavior and the desired behavior Implement a new approach Express concerns, questions and ideas about the agreed upon next steps Displays encouragement to pursue the plan How will these actions impact you? What is the difference you want to make with these actions we've discussed? What would happen if? If you could change one thing Helps encourage and motivate reps to be an active participant in their development Help the rep understand how their outcomes are a result of their actions Help Innovate with ideas Proactively suggest their own experiences Formulate new solutions and ideas Creative Unconscious – "I am" dimension – this is who you are and what you say to yourself – internal self talk creates the beliefs that can limit you Layer three questions help break through the belief boundaries that limit progress You are going to be coaching your rep through change in and for that change to be positive and beneficial, the motivation for it needs to come from the rep themselves Understanding what motivates and drives your rep will better help you to inspire your rep to embrace development and change Values are intrinsic to a rep, they are ideals and beliefs that each rep holds, and they influence actions, decisions and even the way we see the world. Unless you are coaching your rep to achieve goals that are in line with their values and the priorities they place on them, your coaching sessions are going to prove fruitless, and your rep won't be motivated to adapt and improve Transition By layering your questions, from L1 to L3, it will allow you be more effective with each and every rep. But as we learned from Situational Awareness, our ability to pivot and transition when situations arise is important to maintaining a conversation. That's why we use clarifying and confirming questions to help navigate our rep discussions… let's discuss what we mean.

[Audio] This slide introduces the two types of questions that helps support navigating a conversation Additional point of your ability to be Conversationally Agile benefits from the purposeful use of these types of questions.

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