160 cards
This deck explores the heart of great coaching: asking questions that open up thinking rather than close it down. You'll find prompts covering what makes a question genuinely powerful, why open-ended questions matter so much, and the practical differences between approaches like "what" versus "why" questions. The cards then walk through specific question types for opening sessions, clarifying goals, exploring reality, surfacing assumptions, shifting perspective, building emotional awareness, uncovering strengths, exploring obstacles, separating facts from stories, and encouraging bold or values-aligned thinking.
The deck is a good fit for practicing coaches, aspiring coaches working toward certification, managers and mentors who guide others through conversations, and anyone curious about improving the way they ask questions in everyday life. Even if you don't coach formally, the ideas here can sharpen how you listen, reflect, and invite deeper reflection in the people around you.
Because these are practical prompts meant to be used, try speaking them out loud during your review sessions and notice which ones feel most natural to you and which feel harder. Spacing your study across several days rather than cramming will help the different question categories settle into long-term memory, and pairing review with a real conversation each week is the fastest way to turn the cards into a lived skill.
What question supports emotional awareness?
This question focuses the client on identifying and naming their current emotional state, which is the foundation of emotional awareness.
What question uncovers strengths?
This question prompts clients to recall past successes and identify their effective strategies, revealing existing strengths.
What question deepens values alignment?
This question directly addresses values by asking clients to identify what's most important in their decision-making process.
What question explores obstacles constructively?
This question categorizes obstacles into specific types, allowing for more targeted problem-solving and clear identification of barriers.
What question helps clients separate facts from stories?
This question explicitly distinguishes between objective information and the interpretation or narrative clients create around those facts.
What question widens option generation?
By asking for multiple options and accepting imperfect ones, this question reduces perfectionism and expands the range of possibilities.
What question encourages bold thinking?
This question removes the fear of failure, allowing clients to imagine and articulate more ambitious ideas than they might otherwise consider.
What question tests commitment?
The rating scale quantifies commitment, while asking about moving it higher identifies specific action steps to increase buy-in and follow-through.
What question clarifies ownership?
This question clarifies ownership by shifting focus to elements that a person has direct agency over, separating what they can control from external factors.
What question strengthens agency?
This question strengthens agency by identifying unique actions that require the person's specific capabilities, reinforcing personal responsibility.
What question helps examine trade-offs?
This question reveals trade-offs by making explicit the opportunity costs of decisions, showing that choices inherently involve prioritizing certain options over others.
What question reveals hidden cost?
This question reveals hidden costs by highlighting ongoing expenses or consequences of maintaining the status quo, which people often overlook when considering change.
What question supports courage?
This question supports courage by directly addressing uncomfortable but necessary conversations that the person may be evading, helping them confront what needs to be done.
What question brings focus back to the client?
This question refocuses on client needs by differentiating personal desires from external expectations, clarifying authentic priorities and objectives.
What question helps prioritize?
This question aids prioritization by identifying actions that create the most significant impact relative to effort, focusing resources on what matters most.
What question creates specificity?
This question creates specificity by translating abstract goals into concrete, measurable outcomes that can be objectively assessed and verified.
What question encourages experimentation?
This question encourages experimentation by focusing on small, manageable actions that reduce the fear of failure while promoting learning through doing.
What question invites accountability?
This question invites accountability by explicitly asking for commitments with deadlines and self-responsibility mechanisms.
What question checks learning after action?
This question checks learning after action by prompting reflection on outcomes and explicitly connecting insights to future actions.
What question helps close a session well?
This question helps close a session well by summarizing key takeaways and ensuring immediate application of insights.
What question challenges avoidance gently?
This question challenges avoidance gently by bringing attention to procrastinated tasks in a way that emphasizes their value for progress.
Why ask about identity in coaching?
Asking about identity in coaching reveals core beliefs that shape behavior and can be more powerful than addressing surface-level actions alone.
What is a useful identity question?
This identity question helps clients examine their role and mindset in specific situations, revealing patterns of self-perception.
What is the purpose of asking about desired support?
Asking about desired support helps identify specific barriers and creates customized solutions that increase action-taking momentum.
What is a useful support question?
This question is useful because it directly addresses practical implementation needs by identifying specific resources that would help bridge the gap between intention and action.
Why can hypothetical future questions help?
Hypothetical future questions are effective because they allow clients to mentally practice success while building awareness of the specific conditions that would make success more probable.
What is a future-state question?
A future-state question prompts clients to envision concrete outcomes by describing what would be different if the current issue were resolved, making solutions more tangible.
What is the value of asking what they are avoiding learning?
Asking about avoidance is valuable because it uncovers psychological barriers, fears, and resistances that may be blocking progress by bringing unconscious patterns into awareness.
What is a useful avoidance-learning question?
This avoidance-learning question is effective because it reframes challenges as teachers, prompting clients to consider lessons they might be resisting to facilitate deeper self-awareness.
Why should coaches revisit earlier answers?
Revisiting earlier answers allows clients to gain new perspective as their awareness evolves throughout the conversation, often revealing insights they weren't ready to process initially.
What is a pattern-recognition question?
A pattern-recognition question helps clients identify recurring themes across different areas of their life, promoting greater self-awareness of how patterns manifest.
What makes a coaching question timely?
A coaching question is timely when it aligns with the client's current capacity for insight, their emotional receptivity, and the appropriate depth for that specific moment in the conversation.
A powerful coaching question is one that creates reflection, challenges assumptions, and helps the client generate their own insight rather than receive advice. The most effective questions share a common quality: they invite the client to think rather than deliver a quick answer. Open-ended questions sit at the centre...
A strong coaching session typically begins with a question that establishes what the client wants from the conversation. Asking what would make the conversation genuinely useful today hands ownership to the client from the first minute and signals that the session will follow their priorities. From there, the coach mov...
Before a client can move toward a goal, they need a clear-eyed view of where they actually are. The question "what is happening right now, and what evidence tells you that?" grounds the conversation in observable reality rather than interpretation. Closely related is the assumption-surfacing question, "what are you ass...
Once reality is clearer, the work of expanding possibility begins. Asking for three possible ways forward, even if they feel imperfect, invites the client to generate options without the pressure of finding the perfect one. Pairing this with "what would you try if you knew you could not fail?" encourages bold thinking...
Some of the most powerful coaching questions operate at the level of identity rather than behaviour. Asking who the client is being when they respond to a situation in a particular way reveals the beliefs they hold about who they are and what they are capable of. A complementary question asks the client to imagine the...
Coaching questions that address emotion help clients move from being overwhelmed by a feeling to learning from it. Asking what feeling is most present right now, and then inviting the client to locate where in their body it shows up and to describe its quality, turns vague distress into something concrete enough to wor...
Questions about action begin with ownership. Asking what part of a situation is fully within the client's control, and what is the next action only they can take, shifts the client from a vague sense of wanting things to be different to a clear sense of what they can actually do. Trade-off questions make the cost of an...
Coaching questions about relationships help clients see beyond their initial framing of a dynamic. Asking how someone they trust might see the situation differently offers a gentle perspective shift, while asking what the client's own contribution is to the dynamic, even if it is small, interrupts the common habit of l...