As the other sessions began, so did this one, with a quick review of the community agreements. This session would be about practicing. We were going to be talking about conversation, or more importantly, questioning and deep listening. We started with a “magical question” (as Priya Parker describes them here)
“What’s your favorite thing to ask a group?”
We watched the video and discussed our favorites or ones that made us think from the video.
“What did your childhood taste like?”
- “What was your name in a past life?”
- “What’s the tea? – Who got in trouble today?”
- “Where are you from?”
A magical question is one where folks are as interested in sharing as they are hearing others, it makes folks lean into the conversation. It’s magic!
After this magical question conversation, I moved into the goals – which were in service of practicing.
Focus on 3 pieces of the Radical Love Coaching Cycle:
- Setting the Agenda
- Asking Powerful Questions
- Enabling Self Reflection
Through:
- Diving into Curiosity and questions,
- Choosing and creating our favorite question stems for each stage of the focus pieces of the cycle
In order to dive into the curiosity and questions we watched this video about asking good questions, especially as a coach.
“Good questions are like intellectual fireworks.” – Jim Knight
Knight discusses how to ask questions that give power to the teacher when coaching. He gives some examples of how to ask questions and actual question stems. We had a short discussion about this video and the elements Knight shares.
As we mulled over questioning we listened to Knight’s final advice of finding our favorite questions and if possible making it “our own” and placing it into the coaching cycle diagram on page 2. This led to a resource built for coaches, by coaches.
As we closed the session, we watched/listened to another video from Jim Knight, this time it was about listening, which if we are asking questions we need to be able to listen deeply in order to build trust. Jim gives some helpful tips and tricks to demonstrating listening through body language and not interrupting – “interrupting is a power move.”
“If you care and you’re curious, you can listen” – Jim Knight
How will you practice asking questions and deep listening in order to practice radical love?
lizzie fortin 