Stephanie Soler

Stephanie Soler is a leadership coach and educator who draws from two decades of professional experience in strategy consulting, executive coaching, and organizational behavior. She previously spent six years as a consultant at McKinsey & Company advising Fortune 500 firms on strategic and organizational challenges. She lectures in organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business while maintaining a coaching practice that serves senior executives and leadership teams both locally and globally.

Soler’s coaching philosophy centers on enabling leaders to develop their own insights rather than providing ready-made solutions. She believes that complex, multifaceted business situations rarely have single correct answers, and that a leader’s primary responsibility involves facilitating others’ thinking.

The core of Soler’s methodology involves deploying open-ended questions with genuine curiosity to help leaders navigate decision-making, across four domains: understanding priorities, redirecting focus from problems to possibilities, generating alternatives through creative exploration, and clarifying action steps.

One of your most important tasks as a CEO is getting work done through others.  When you are the leader, it’s easy for others to look to you for the answers.  As you coach others, you may fall into the trap of telling and giving instructions.  After all, you have valuable experience and expertise to offer.

Telling others what to do only goes so far. It works well when the question is straightforward and the answer is obvious. More often, the situation is complex, and there is often more than one right answer. Your job is to help your coachee think, rather than think for your coachee.

The good news here is that you don’t have to have all the answers. Great coaches inquire,asking powerful questions to uncover what’s really important, and enable others to tap into their own knowledge and expertise.

What is a powerful question? It is NOT a “statement disguised as a question,” like this one: “Have you tried working from home one day per week do give yourself more time for strategic thinking?” Notice that this is a closed, yes-or-no question, and the questioner probably has a “right” answer in mind. It’s a suggestion, not a question. It’s perfectly fine to make a suggestion; just don’t mistake it for a powerful question.

Powerful questions are open-ended, and asked with genuine curiosity. The next time you feel compelled to jump in with ideas and suggestions, consider getting curious instead, and help someone develop their own insight. Here are some powerful questions to get you going.

Powerful questions are open-ended, and asked with genuine curiosity.

The next time you feel compelled to quickly jump in with ideas and suggestions, first get truly curious. Ask questions without attachments to the answers. Here are some powerful questions to get you going.

Open dialogue.

Ask these to understand what is important to someone else.

1. What challenges are you facing?
2. What matters to you right now?
3. What’s on your mind today?
4. What opportunities are you seeing?
5. What else?

Set direction.

Ask these to shift focus from what’s wrong to what’s possible.

1. What is the best possible outcome?
2. What are you trying to achieve?
3. What do you want to happen next?
4. What does success look like?
5. How will you know when you’ve succeeded?

Shape options.

Ask these to generate ideas.

1. What have you tried?
2. What options do you have?
3. What else?
4. How possible is each option?
5. What would you have to believe for this option to be right?

Define next actions.

Ask these to help someone figure out what to do next.

1. What data/information do you need to make a decision?
2. What action can you take now?
3. What are you taking away from this conversation, as a next step or new way of thinking?
4. What support do you need? Where will you get it?

5. How can I help?

Coaches can and should offer observations, feedback, guidance, and advice based on what they know and have seen before. When you take the time to ask powerful questions, you may need to offer less than you think.