Ask questions

Principles

Asking questions is an important part of coaching. Here are a number of important principles.

• Ask open-ended questions
• 'What', 'how' and 'which' are better than 'why' questions
• Try to make answers more concrete as possible: ask for clarification or concrete behaviour
• Use acknowledgments, repetitions, or summaries to put a student at ease and keep talking
• Use reflection to express feelings¹ in words
• Make use of (short) silences
• Avoid leading questions² (you certainly don't want to...) or clearly socially desirable questions
• Avoid opinions and rhetorical questions³

1. A reflection on feelings is naming the feeling you perceive in the other person. This will check whether you are interpreting the observation correctly and encourage the student to tell more about this feeling. Examples are: "Are you afraid that you will not be able to catch up on your studies?" or "Do you feel like you are in the wrong programme?"
2. A suggestive question is a question that aims for a certain answer: "Such a heavy science education doesn't appeal to you, does it?" "Do you also think that the cooperation in the project could have been better?"
3. A rhetorical question is a question for which the answer is already clear: "Who is actually responsible for their own study results?"

Start conversation

A good start is half the battle. When you start the conversation well, there is less chance of confusion during the conversation and you can focus more on the content. A good conversation starts with good preparation. Whenever possible, read through the student's report yourself and take a moment to review the salient points. Determine any topics of discussion based on the results in the report. Also ask the student to prepare for the interview. It is often useful to have the student answer the four questions below and write them down on one A4. The student can bring his/her notes to the interview. This assignment ensures that a student has already actively thought about the results and that the results have been read carefully.

1. What did you think of taking the tests?
2. Which results do you recognize and why do you recognize these results?
3. Which results do you not recognize and why do you not recognize these results?
4. Based on the test results, are there any particular points you would like to work on?

At the beginning of a conversation about test results, the first thing that is important is to put the student at ease. After that, the rules of the conversation can be discussed with the student. Optionally, you can start by asking about the student's expectations about the interview. In this way, the student immediately adopts an active attitude towards the conversation. The student's expectations can be supplemented or adjusted if necessary. Make sure the student is well aware of the purpose of the conversation. For example, indicate that the goal is to: "Discuss the report and find out how/whether the student can be supported in successfully completing his/her education." After that, it is always good to emphasize that the conversation is confidential and to indicate what happens with the results of the conversation (are they registered somewhere?). Finally, indicate how long the conversation will last. This is shown point by point below.

At the start of the conversation:

• The reason for this conversation
• Emphasize confidentiality
• The objective of this conversation
• Emphasize the mutual interest
• The duration of this conversation
• Your own role and your expectation of the participant.

It can then be checked whether:

• there is agreement with this structure
• there is agreement on the meaning of the test components that will be discussed

Sometimes a student wants to start talking about the content right away, try not to go into this immediately and first complete the introduction completely. After the introduction of the conversation has been completed, the student can be put at ease a little more, if necessary. In general, it makes sense to ask a few broader introductory questions before discussing the specific results. These can include questions such as:

• "Did you notice any things while you were filling out the tests?"
• "How did you like taking the tests?"
• "In general, what did you think of the results in the report?"

These questions will give you an idea of how the student experienced the tests and the results and whether there may be factors that play a role in this. For example, it could be that the student was disturbed while taking a capacity test that resulted in a low score. These questions also often make it clear whether there is resistance on the part of the student. This is important information for the interpretation of the results. In addition, it may happen that students have consciously or unconsciously filled in a certain direction (answer pattern). For example, some students will have assessed themselves very critically when filling in the questionnaire and others will assess themselves very positively. If you suspect that something similar has happened to a student when filling in the answers, you can ask questions, see answer patterns.

After you have discussed the general questions with the student, you can discuss specific results. Make sure the student has a good understanding of the meaning of the scales and the results. Sometimes miscommunication about this can lead to an (apparent) difference of opinion about the interpretation of the results. For example: A student scores low on oral communication and indicates that he does not recognize this result. The student thinks that "She likes to talk to others and she has a lot of friends with whom she talks too much rather than too little." In this case, the image of the student does not match the meaning of the oral communication scale. In cases like this, it often helps to take the explanation of the scale and discuss it with the student before discussing why someone does or does not recognize themselves in a result. Often, a wrong picture of the meaning of a scale leads to people not recognizing themselves in the results. When it is clear what the meaning of a score on a certain scale is, you can ask whether this image is correct.

You then start the first phase of the coaching circle, "experiencing". In this phase, you can gain more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the student's performance in a structured way, by means of the STARR method, for competency and personality measurements.