10 Powerful Questions to Be a Better Coach and Space Holder
Want to be a better coach and space holder? Learn to ask better questions.
In this episode, I share 10 foundational questions that will help you create deeper connection, unlock powerful breakthroughs, and hold space like a pro. Whether you're hosting groups or coaching 1-1s, these questions are a solid toolkit you can always come back to. Perfect for meditation teachers, coaches, and anyone committed to making a lasting impact in the lives of others.
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If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Hello there, Dear listener of the Art and Business of Meditation podcast. Thank you for being here. I'm your host, Lou Redmond. Today we have a solo episode of this podcast and for those that are newer to me, just a quick background of why I do this. I quit a job in 2015 to pursue my purpose, didn't quite know what that looked like, had to figure out how I was meant to serve. And that process of stepping out of the corporate world and figuring out how to be an entrepreneur, how to make my own living, how to make my own way has been so incredibly rewarding and fulfilling and challenging and. And so I share this because I wish I had this type of podcast for myself, for people like you, who want to bring their sacred holy work into the world, who are teaching mindfulness meditation, who are doing spiritual coaching or guidance or energy healing, or are soulful creatives, creative entrepreneurs that want to make stuff, videos, meditations, write poetry, art, paint and be supported because you feel like you are doing what the universe, what God, whoever brought you here to do, or you are just expressing, you're doing it because you're passionate, you're interested in it. And that's enough. And that really is enough. So thank you for being here. Our episode today is on questions that you can ask to be a better coach or space holder. Questions are such an important piece of helping people process, guiding people deeper into their experience and creating pathways of connection or insight. So whether you are hosting a group and you ask questions after you have people chat with each other on specific questions, or maybe you have a one on one coaching practice, or maybe you're a teacher who would like to have some sort of one on one practice or have something else that they can do besides just meditate. Learning some foundational coaching questions. There's so much more to coaching than just asking the right questions, or not even the right questions, but asking powerful questions or asking deepening questions. There's so much more to it, but for this episode I want to keep it super simple. Almost like a Coaching Questions 101 mini course that hopefully you can bring into your practice. Maybe there's questions you're already asking, but just a way that you can create a deeper connection with the people that you're serving and hopefully be able to hold space. To be able to hold space that is nourishing and where the other person really feels seen, heard and felt. And that is the power of being able to hold space. And especially in a coaching context, it's the power of mirroring. Not parroting, as my teacher Steve March would say, not saying every word that they're saying, but truly mirroring, letting them know, hey, I hear you, I'm listening and I'm here to understand you. I'm not here to tell you what I think you should do. Or maybe that's part of your coaching and it could be that's traditionally not. When I think of a traditional coach or a contemplative coach, it's really not about guidance. Although I might do that if I was mentoring someone in this sphere where I might say, hey, what about this? And you might do that too in your one on one space. Explore, brainstorm ideas. That's great, but really what it's about is helping them deepen into their experience, showing understanding. There's just not a lot of places people have where they're fully listened to and understood without someone else waiting to chime in or get their point across. And so just some basic foundations of coaching questions is that you want to make sure the question is open ended versus a closed. So simple example is instead of saying simple example might be like hey, is this a big or a small issue example of a closed question, they would say this is a small issue, Boom, no more conversation. The non closed question, the open ended question would be what kind of an issue is this for you? They might say yeah, it's actually really a big issue. And then they're going to continue, they're going to continue just seeing where their words go. So noticing, trying not to ask yes, no, this or that close questions and trying to ask open questions. Another big proponent of good coaching questions is to avoid why. So questions like what, what, where, how, who, maybe if you're trying to resource them with other people. But why questions as it said, can take people more into defensing meaning like they feel like they need to protect their answers and sometimes can halter deepening. It ends up going in their head. They're trying to find a reason and it just often as a generalization noted, especially if you're newer to coaching, just know, try to avoid the why questions. Now this is a generalization that there's some times where the why question is the question that you need to answer. So if you do enough coaching, you'll get a sense of this. At some point we are going to break this down into opening feeling and envisioning. So opening you're going to try to get the sense of what is wanting to be worked on. What is this? The. The content that we're going to explore today? And so a simple question that I love is once we drop in, we get present, is, what's alive for you right now? And often they're either going to bring in what their topic is that they want to work on, if this is a coaching context, or they're going to explore what's present for them. And I found. And what a lot of coaches find and a lot of coaching trainings teach is that actually often what's happening right now is the most important thing. You guys know this. You're meditation teachers. And so when we come into right now that, yes, maybe they thought a couple days ago that they wanted to bring this topic up with you, but actually what's alive right now is something that just happened and there's a contact with it, there's a charge, and there's potentially something that's wanting to emerge and it could be connected to the thing that they wanted to bring in. So what's alive for you right now? And again, I'm going to try and teach these in a way that's specifically for a coaching context conversation. And also maybe you're just teaching a yoga class, a meditation class, and you're having people reflect on these, either out loud or to themselves. And so some of them aren't totally going to be for that context. But I'm trying to keep this open to know that you can use these questions in many different contexts. And so you might ask what's alive for you right now? They're going to give you a couple different options. They might keep talking and you're trying to get to what is the issue. There's a great book called the Coaching Habit that has seven questions. I kind of maybe bring three from that book here, and I kind of expand on them in a second. But the Coaching Habit, simple book, seven questions. You can probably look it up online. Don't even need to buy the book, actually buy the book, support the author. But it's a very simple book. But you were trying to find the issue. And so sometimes reflecting back issues that you're hearing, like, hey, you mentioned this thing with your mom and you mentioned this thing where you don't feel confident in creating content or something like that. Right? So there's two different issues, and then you have them choose which are you more curious about. So simple. You mention this, you mention that, you mention that, you mention this. It could be multiple issues. Slow down for a moment. Which one of these Are you more curious about? And then they choose what the issue is. And I've gotten ahead of myself. But the question that's from the coaching habit is, what's the real issue here for you? What's the real issue here for you? So you can say, which are you more curious about as you name the issues? Or you could just go right to it, say, hey, I'm hearing a lot, but what's the real issue here for you? So opening, getting clear, trying to find the topic. So next, if you are in the meditation world, we want people to feel their bodies. And if you do any sort of deep work, somatic coaching, or have done any sort of trainings in this world, like I have, feeling your body, feeling, coming in contact with your experience is such a big important piece of it. And so simple line and question as you speak about this issue. What do you feel in your body? And so they'll slow down, connect, get a sense. Okay, and the follow up question to that, whether it's something that they're like, wow, I feel just light and expansiveness, or they might be like, I feel this density, I feel this anger, whatever it is. You again, get permission. You say, hey, is it okay to just feel that for a moment? And then you just hold space. And honestly, that does so much. As they have a place to be held and go inwards often, that's just going to bring up whatever the next piece of work is and that's going to lead them. So you're helping them lead and guide their own experience. And a way to keep connecting back to them is as they're feeling it, you mirror back. You're just mirroring back. Oh, I'm noticing that there's some tears welling up. Or I'm noticing that you're tightening. So learning again, the power of mirroring back, just seeing what their experience is can be so powerful. And you might just say or ask, well, what's happening now? And you just keep having them talk more about their experience. And so those are kind of the core ones around feeling as you speak about this issue. What do you feel in your body? What are you aware of? What do you feel? There's so many. I'm not going to go into. I'm trying to make this a simple podcast episode. What do you feel in your body? Is it okay to feel it? And then as they're doing it, okay, what's happening now? And what's happening now is like a question. I just always come back to, like, hey, let's just pause here. Like, what's happening right now? Because even if it's a question that you can use when you're lost, when you're like, I'm not really sure where we're going, let me just come back. Let's both center and let's just check in. Like, what's here right now? What's happening now? There's many ways you can say this and then another question that is helpful and I use all the time, which is not really a question. You can say it as a question in the coaching habit. It's pointed as a question where they say, and what else? I don't really like saying and what else? I just tend to say, hey, tell me more, tell me more. They might be saying a topic where I'm not really getting the essence of it. And so, hey, let's expand on that. Tell me more about that. Or you feel like they haven't really hit something. Tell me more. So again, another back pocket sort of statement or invitation for people to just expand on what they're giving to you. So that's a little bit with feeling. And the tell me more can be used really anywhere and then envisioning. So thinking about creating, visioning, trying to have a clarity around what they're doing. My 100%. This is probably the question I've asked the most in and ever in coaching. Maybe. Actually, I definitely have asked what is, what are you feeling? Or what does it feel in your body more? But what does that look like? So someone's talking about an idea, someone's talking about their issue in this area and you just have them create a picture. What does that look like? You know what it looks like. I'm actually, you know, I'm driving and it looks. They might go to metaphor, you know, that you might have them, you know, see, like, oh, wow, let's really expand on them. They might go into a metaphor, which is always great to use in coaching. Or they might get really practical and tactical. Hey, it looks like actually I'm going to call my mom every week and have this conversation. Oh, okay, great. So that maybe comes with an action step from that. So what does that look like? Super simple. This is a question that I have the hat tip to Tim Ferriss is where I learned it from. The next one that is. And I've spoken about it before, one of the greatest questions that we can all ask ourselves at any time is what would it look like if it were easy? What would it look like if it were easy? I asked that question for myself in this Podcast. What would it look like if it were easy? Well, I wouldn't stress about everything. I wouldn't do my solo podcast episodes. Like I needed to have every single word scripted and have the most incredible, mind blowing thing to tell people. What if I just looked like it was easy? I would say, hey, what's a solo episode I want to do this week? Oh, here's an idea. Some questions to be a better coach. Let's just make it easy and share these questions and maybe it's valuable for some and if it's not the episode for everyone, that's okay too. Hopefully they'll, you know, come on to the next episode. But let's keep the consistency, right? If they can just take one question from here and if you're able to bring it into a conversation in a coaching container or how you hold space, then I think that's a valuable use of your time. So what would it look like if it was easy? I'm just going to start talking and see what happens. So if I get rambly on here, then that's probably why. It's because I've tried to make this podcast easier than being just so, so perfect on everything. I'm going to say. And then this is another one from the Coaching Habit book. If you say yes to this, what are you saying no to? Just a good way to be clear. If they make a decision, okay, well what's the effect of that decision? Or if you say no to this, what possibilities might come up if you want to take a bit of an inverse to that? I always make things too complicated. If you say yes to this, what are you saying no to? I'm going to have one more question around. Mindset Bonus question. Here is something I use less nowadays because a lot of my coaching I trying to help people get out of their heads. If we're doing more of the deep inner work type of coaching for doing business, mentoring and creativity exploration, that'll be a different topic, different things that we would talk about. But one question that you might hear often in coaching is what are you making that mean? So we have a belief about something or an idea about something and then we make, we put meaning onto it, right? I'm making it mean that my mom doesn't really love me. Oh, that's interesting. Is that true? I'm going deeper into it again. This could really put people into their heads. So I don't ask it a ton, but I was trying to make this episode where it's beneficial. If you're newer, you don't already have a coaching practice or. But I find it can be useful even sometimes. I will still use it sometimes, but I use it a little bit less nowadays. All right. There's so many more questions. Trust your intuition. Trust yourself. Trust your own exploration. I'll recap all the questions that I gave you today. The opening questions. What's alive for you right now? You're mentioning this issue, that issue, that issue. Which are you more curious about? What's the real issue here for you as you speak about this issue? What do you feel in your body? Is it okay to feel it? What's happening now? Tell me more. What does that look like? What would it look like if it were easy? If you say yes to this, what are you saying no to? What are you making that mean? There's the recap, everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope you can take one of these away. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you. Please leave a review. It really, really helps. I haven't gotten a review since May on my Apple podcast. So if you are the one to leave the review and you send me the review and you're the one after May, like you do it in November and you screenshot it, you send it to me. I will send you a free copy of the audio version of my book and I'll also give you a hug virtually. I would really appreciate it. So that is you believes it. Send it to me. And uh, I've done this promotion before with my email list, so maybe you already did it, but I'll ask again if you can send me it on Apple. That would be so appreciated. Thank you again for listening. And if you are someone wanting to use meditation to share your gifts, I have a free course called Meditation Script Mastery. You can click the link in the podcast description and get you set up with learning how to create unique meditations that you can share with your students, your clients, and you can share with your friends. So thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.