I’m watching missionaries, who are sitting in pairs, deeply engaged in conversation. These missionaries are asking each other key questions: What people/projects are you investing your energy in? What’s been satisfying/frustrating? What are the reasons for your feelings of satisfaction/frustration? How can I pray for you?
 
I’m thinking, “This is going pretty well. They’re more engaged than if I did the traditional style of devotions. They’re provoking each other to reflect. And they look like they’re having a good time. Having them use a set of questions worked.”
 
Want to provoke reflection throughout your mission? Have people in your mission use a set of questions to talk together.
 
For example, when you are starting a mission gathering and need an icebreaker, have participants ask each other a set of questions:  When you were in 5th grade, where did you live? What did you enjoy doing? What’s easy/challenging about living in this country? In your recent personal life, what’s been encouraging/discouraging? Overall, how are you feeling? How can I pray for you?
 
When you’re leading a team meeting and want team members to reflect on ministry goals, have team members ask each other a set of questions: What are your ministry goals? What progress on your goals have you experienced? What roadblocks have you experienced? How can you leverage your progress and minimize your roadblocks? You talked about _____ today—what do you think you’ll do?
 
When you’re leading a workshop on getting more organized, have participants ask each other a set of questions: What tools do you use to get organized? How do you feel when you’re organized/disorganized? For you, what does being organized look like? To get organized, what do you need to keep doing, start doing, and stop doing? What will you do?
 
Use the following set of questions to reflect on this article:

1. What is 1 thing from this article that interested you?
2. What excites/concerns you about provoking reflection throughout your mission?
3. How could using a set of questions help you provoke reflection?
4. When could you use a set of questions to provoke reflection?
5. What will you do?

Want to encourage coaching in your organization? One way I encourage coaching is by developing sets of questions to be used in meetings and workshops. As a result of using sets of questions in meetings and workshops, staff have shifted toward asking questions and away from giving advice.

In the planning sessions I'm facilitating today, participants are using the following sets of questions to help others reflect:

Set 1

1. What’s your mission?
2. What’s it take to carry out your mission?
3. What’s already been accomplished?
4. What helps you?
5. What hinders you?
6. What are your options?
7. What will you do to achieve your goals?

Set 2

1. What is your mission? What are your goals?
2. How would you categorize progress on your goals? Why?
3. To what extent do your current action steps help you address your goals?

Set 3

1. What topics did you talk about in your tactical meeting?
2. What action steps are you going to take before your next meeting?
3. What did you learn by trying out different roles?
4. What will help your team work together better?

That’s a good question. Let me respond by asking you a question: What encouraged you to get coached and to coach others? Figure out what encouraged you and use that to encourage coaching in your organization.

What initially encouraged me to get coached was reading about coaching and talking with a friend about how coaching encouraged him and helped him achieve his goals. What really sold me on getting coached was the results I got from getting coached—I felt encouraged, I was better able to achieve my personal and professional goals, and I was empowered to pursue God’s calling.

What encouraged me to coach others was the results I got from getting coached, talking with a friend who coached others, reading books, and completing a coaching certification program.


Question: So, how can you encourage coaching in your organization?

Answer: Based on what encouraged me to get coaching and coach others, I suggest you consider taking action steps like:

1. Continuing getting coached yourself, coaching others, and talking about the results of coaching.
2. Helping leaders understand what coaching is and how they can benefit from it. 
3. Getting leaders to receive coaching.
4. Training leaders to coach others.
5. Getting leaders to start coaching key staff members and use coaching skills throughout the day. 
6. Helping staff understand what coaching is and how they can benefit from it. 
7. Getting more and more staff to receiving coaching.
8. Training staff to coach others.
9. Getting staff to start coaching other staff members and use coaching skills throughout the day. 

You might be thinking, “Looks like I should take those steps in the order they are listed.” I can see why you would think that, and generally speaking, taking the steps in the order listed is helpful. But, there is no one right way to do it—for example, you can take the steps in a different order if that is what works best for you and your organization.


Question: How can you determine the action steps you want to take and the sequence of those action steps?

Answer: I suggest that you get a team together and:

• Share what encouraged you to get coached, what encouraged you to coach others, and how coaching has helped you and others.
• Reflect on the benefits of establishing a coaching culture.
• Take a self-assessment on how a coaching culture could help your organization, and discuss your assessment results.
• Review the action steps listed above. Then, determine what action steps you will take and the order of those action steps.

Question: What might encouraging coaching in your organization look like?

Answer: Here’s an example. Let’s assume you’ve already talked with your team about establishing a coaching culture, and you’ve determined that you want to start by introducing everyone to coaching through a 3-hour workshop:

Your goals for the workshop include having participants:

1. Reflect on the power of questions.
2. Understand what coaching is and how it works.
3. Experience leading by asking questions/coaching.
4. Get more interested in getting coached and getting coach training.

To prepare leaders and staff for the workshop, you:

1. Ask them to take a short online tutorial on exploring getting coaching.
2. Encourage key staff (especially the members of your team) to experience coaching by providing coaching sessions at their convenience.

Then during the 3-hour workshop, you have participants:

1. (10 minutes) Listen to 1 or more testimonials on how coaching has helped.
2. (10 minutes) Watch 2 people model coaching by using a set of questions, for example: What people/projects are you spending your time/energy on? What’s been satisfying/frustrating? What are the reasons for your feelings of satisfaction/frustration? What do you think you’ll do?
3. (25 minutes) Use a set of questions to talk with a partner (What people/projects are you spending your time/energy on? What’s been satisfying/frustrating? What are the reasons for your feelings of satisfaction/frustration? How can I pray for you?). Then, pray together.
4. (20 minutes) Reflect on why God asks questions.
5. (30 minutes) Read and discuss 1 or more articles on Christian coaching that include an emphasis on asking questions, for example: “Lead by Asking Questions,” “The Startup Guide to Coaching Leaders,” “The Coaching Approach to Growth,” “The Heart of a Coach,” and “What is ‘Coaching’ to You?” (Additional resources are available through Close the Gap Now, Creative Results Management, The Christian Coaching Center, and Coach22.)
6. (15 minutes) Break
7. (20 minutes) Take and discuss a self-assessment on leading by asking questions.
8. (25 minutes) Use a set of questions to help a partner process something. (Time permitting, debrief this.)
9. (15 minutes) Use a set of questions to debrief the workshop, for example: What did we do during the workshop? What excites/concerns you about leading by asking questions? What excites/concerns you about coaching? What insights did you have? How could leading by asking questions/coaching help us? What’s next? (This can be done in partners/small groups and then as a whole group.)
10. (10 minutes) Receive information about how they can get coach training and coaching.

After the workshop, you will:

1. Continue getting coached, coaching others, and talking about the results of coaching.
2. Continue meeting as a team to talk about encouraging coaching and to identify action steps.
3. Provide coaching and encourage staff (especially leaders) to receive coaching.
4. Provide coach training.
5. Provide reading material.

Reflect: How are you going to encourage coaching in your organization? What action steps are you going to take? In what order?

*Want additional resources on coaching?

• Tutorials
• Videos
• Blog entries on coaching culture
• Books
• Newsletters
• Training: Close the Gap Now, Creative Results Management

You're a missionary serving in Latin America. You send monthly newsletters to your supporters, and you send monthly reports to your mission. Each time you send a newsletter, you receive encouraging emails and notes; each time you send a report, you receive an acknowledgement (and most times not even that). Unless things aren't going well—then you receive “feedback.”
 
Now you learn that your mission wants to encourage you to get coaching.
 
How do you feel about getting coaching? I wouldn’t be feeling good. And I'd be thinking, "Am I doing something wrong? Is something not going well? I think things are going well, so maybe coaching is for others. The mission tends to offer help when things aren't going well, so coaching probably wouldn't be useful."
 
My point: If you want missionaries to feel good about getting coaching, you may need to help them see coaching as a way of getting positive feedback. You can do this by:

• Explaining that the coach provides encouragement (not criticism).
• Sharing that coaching is a way to build on strengths.
• Emphasizing that in coaching, the client (not the supervisor) decides what to work on.

What are some other ways you can help missionaries feel good about getting coaching?

If you want to help missionaries value getting coaching, you may need to start by helping them value personal and professional growth. Why? Because coaching is about growth, and if missionaries don’t value growth, they won’t seek coaching.
 
Question: Why might missionaries not value personal and professional growth?
 
Answer: Because they focus on serving others. Because they work in an organization that doesn’t have an organizational growth plan or a professional development plan. Because their mission doesn’t emphasize personal or professional growth.
 
Question: How can you help missionaries value growth?
 
Answer: By asking questions like “If you could grow in one area of your life, what would it be?” And by encouraging missions to develop organizational growth plans and professional development plans—this will help missions emphasize personal and professional growth.
 
Question: What strategies have you found useful in helping missionaries value personal and professional growth?

Missionaries want to proclaim the good news of Jesus. So, they do evangelism, baptize and disciple believers, and preach during worship services. God uses these activities to build His kingdom. These activities tend to flow from an advice-giving paradigm, rather than a question-asking paradigm.

Implications: Missionaries have more experience with giving advice than with asking questions. And missionaries value getting advice than more than getting asked questions—which is one reason they don’t pursue getting coaching.

Question: How can you help missionaries value getting asked questions?

My answer: I’m publishing sets of coaching questions in a quarterly magazine that missionaries I know read. I’m encouraging missions to publish short articles on asking questions.

Question: What strategies have you found useful in helping missionaries value getting asked questions?

In a coaching culture, staff members empower each other through listening, inquiry, focusing on SMART actions, and encouragement. To find out how establishing a coaching culture would help you, take the following self-assessment (download). Circle the number that comes closest to representing how true the statement is for your organization right now. Use the following scale:

4: Consistently • 3: Usually • 2: Sometimes • 1: Rarely
 

Culture
___ We communicate effectively.
___ We have good morale.
___ We have good staff longevity.
___ We support staff to achieve work-related goals.
___ We support staff to achieve personal goals.
___ We don’t experience fear of change.
___ We collaborate (instead of conflicting).
___ We focus on results (instead of activity).
___ We focus on the mission (instead of other good things).
___ We focus on working smarter (instead of working harder).
___ We pursue defined goals (instead of pursuing undefined goals).
 
Coaching skills
___ We listen (instead of talking).
___ We inquire (instead of giving advice).
___ We focus others on taking SMART actions (instead of letting others take undefined action).
___ We encourage (instead of criticizing).
 
Coaching skills usage
___ We use coaching skills to move in new directions.
___ We use coaching skills to influence each other.
___ We use coaching skills to collaborate with each other.
___ We empower others to solve their problems (instead of solving others’ problems).
___ We support, encourage, and hold others accountable to achieve goals more (instead of just assigning goals).
 
Coaching culture building blocks
___ Leaders receive coaching.
___ Leaders have taken at least 12-hours of coach training.
___ Leaders coach staff.
___ Leaders use coaching skills throughout the day.
___ Leaders communicate about how coaching helps them and the organization.
___ Staff understand what coaching is and how they can benefit from it.
___ Staff receive coaching.


Now, ask yourself 5 questions about the data:

1. How many 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s do I have?
2. What excites/concerns me about the data?
3. How would establishing a coaching culture help?
4. What can I do to encourage the development of a coaching culture?
5. What will I do?

Empower others. Develop a coaching culture.

The following is the transcript of an interview about moving a mission toward coaching. The interviewee is a veteran missionary.

What challenges do your mission staff face? Missionaries need greater clarity on ministry goals and when enough work is enough. Life balance issues are huge. Our missionaries need more support to put into practice what they already know.

What do your missionaries know about coaching? There’s a general awareness of coaching. About 50% of our people have had some exposure to coaching. Some have received coaching, and some have been in 1-day coaching workshops.

What excites you about having your missionaries get coaching? When people get coached, they make progress. Sometimes they get clear on what their goals are. Through coaching, our staff would receive strategic encouragement.

What concerns you? Some feel that coaching is a fad, so it might be hard to move in this direction. Another thing is that there’s the danger of coaches stepping out of their role and giving direction.

If your mission members got coaching, what might happen? People would be more focused on what they came to do, what they should be about, and confident that they’re doing what they should be doing.

What helps you move your mission toward getting your missionaries involved in coaching? A network of other coaches who prod me to continue on this path.

What hinders you? Busyness. Other things. Limited authority.

What are your options? I can keep on coaching people. I can encourage people to get coach training and to get a coach.

What will you do? I’m going to talk with the person responsible for member care about coaching.

Dr. Keith E. Webb 

Let's be honest, most training is full of knowledge, ideas, and "good stuff" but not much practice.

Paul wrote, "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you" Philippians 4:9.

Too often, my problem is not a lack of knowledge; it is too little living out of that knowledge. Chinese philosopher Han Fei Tzu said it well: “It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know.”

This is where Follow-Up Coaching comes in.

Follow-Up Coaching
Follow-Up coaching comes at the end of content-based training. Coaches use a series of (usually prepared) questions to move the client forward in implementing the training content over the weeks or months following the event.

For example, Focusing Leaders is a process designed by Terry Walling to help mid-career leaders to understand their calling and giftedness. There are group meetings every month with coaching appointments between the meetings. During the coaching appointment the coach will ask a series of set questions in line with the previous group meeting's subject. In this way, the group meeting content gets coached into the lives of the participants.

It's a powerful combination.

In fact, one organization studied the impact of only training vs. training with follow-up coaching. Training produced 23% better performance, but training with follow-up coaching produced 88% better performance. That's a significant difference!

Getting Follow-Up Coaching Going
One feature of organizations that are characterized as having a "coaching culture" is that all their training is followed by coaching. Doing this is actually easier than it may sound.

1. List up the application points of your training. How do you want participants to behave and think differently? Focusing on behavior makes things easier.
2. Take a look at the content of your training and edit it to focus on the behaviors you want to participants to adopt. Cut the extra "good" things, and focus.
3. Create time during the training so participants can plan their implementation. Have participants share that with somebody else.
4. Write up a set coaching questions to be asked to participants during the next couple of weeks or months. With these questions in hand, just about anybody can do the follow-up coaching.
5. Provide follow-up coaching at least 4 times over the next 3 months, beginning a week after the training. Coaches can meet with 1, 2, or 3 participants at a time. (More than that doesn't work as well.) We've also formed participants into groups of 3 and given them the follow-up coaching questions and allowed them to "peer coach" each other. Obviously, the more skilled your coaches are the better the outcome, but half the power is in the questions and the fact that the topic is brought up again 4 more times following the training.

I've implemented Follow-Up Coaching with the shorter training events I lead and have seen fabulous results. How about giving it a try? And let me know how it goes.

Copyright © 2008 Keith E. Webb & CRM
Dr. Keith E. Webb is a trainer and experienced cross-cultural leadership coach helping non-profit organizations, teams, and individuals multiply their cross-cultural impact. Find free articles at http://www.CreativeResultsManagement.com

Want to promote reflection in your organization? Design sets of questions and have partners use them as they dialog. Here are 3 sets of questions I designed and then had our mission's EurAsia Team use:
 
Personal life

1. When you were in 4th grade, where did you live? What did you enjoy doing?
2. What’s easy/challenging about living in your country of service?
3. In your recent personal life, what’s been encouraging/discouraging?
4. Overall, how are you feeling?
5. How can I pray for you?

Ministry overview

1. What people/projects are you investing your energy in?
2. Whom do you talk to about your ministry? What do you talk about?
3. In terms of ministry, what’s been satisfying/frustrating?
4. What are the reasons for your feelings of satisfaction/frustration?
5. You talked about ___ today. What do you think you’ll do?

 Ministry goals

1. What are your ministry goals?
2. What progress on your goals have you experienced? What’s been satisfying?
3. What roadblocks have you experienced? What’s been frustrating?
4. How can you leverage your progress and minimize your roadblocks?
5. You talked about ___ today. What do you think you’ll do?

What's a good way to cultivate a coaching culture? Having staff members ask each other a prescribed set of questions. Doing this results in staff members coaching and receiving coaching—without being trained in coaching.

Here's a sample set of questions for a coaching session:

1. What’s going on in your work?
   
2. What people/projects are you spending your time/energy on?
   
3. What are your goals for this next week/month?
   
4. Whom do you talk to about your work? What do you talk about?
   
5. What progress on your goals have you experienced? What’s been satisfying?
   
6. What roadblocks have you experienced? What’s been frustrating?
   
7. What are the reasons for your feelings of satisfaction and frustration?
   
8. What can you do to build on your progress/minimize your roadblocks? Who can help you?
   
9. You talked about ___ today. What do you think you’ll do?
   
10. How can I pray for you?

What’s the goal of a coaching culture?
Empowering staff to close the rhetoric/reality gap by using coaching to lead, manage, influence, collaborate, and communicate.

What will you see in a coaching culture?
In addition to staff participating in formal coaching, you will see:

• More listening, less talking
  
• More inquiring, less advising
  
• More focusing others on taking SMART actions, less letting others pursue undefined actions
  
• More encouraging, less criticizing
  
• More empowering others to solve their problems, less solving others’ problems

What benefits does a coaching culture provide for you?

• More collaboration, less conflict
  
• More results, less activity
  
• More staff being supported, encouraged, and held accountable to achieve goals; less staff just being assigned goals
  
• More focus on the mission, less focus on other good things
  
• More smart work, less hard work
  
• More pursuit of defined excellence, less pursuit of undefined excellence

What problems can a coaching culture help you address?

• Low morale
  
• Miscommunication
  
• Fear of change
  
• Underperformance
  
• Staff attrition

What factors encourage a coaching culture to start growing?
Leaders and managers supporting a coaching culture by:

• Getting formal coaching
  
• Getting basic coach training
  
• Coaching staff members
  
• Using coaching throughout each day
  
• Talking about how coaching has helped them and the organization

Staff:

• Getting trained on how to benefit from coaching
  
• Getting formal coaching

To begin establishing a coaching culture, take this self-assessment.