The document discusses the power of inquiry and coaching tips for asking powerful questions. It defines inquiry as exploration, probing, investigation or examination. Effective inquiry uses powerful questions. Powerful questions initiate reflective conversations, surface assumptions, and generate enthusiasm. They should be open-ended, avoid blame, and leave room for new questions. The document provides tips for constructing powerful questions and avoiding damaging questions. It also includes a checklist for formulating powerful questions and emphasizes the importance of preparation, relevance, and creating a spirit of collaboration.

1. The Power of Inquiry: Coaching Tips for
You!
Raja Bavani
26-Oct-12 www.agiletour.com

2. What is the meaning of inquiry?
• Inquire – seek information about something or
do a formal investigation, explore, probe,
investigate, examine, analyze, review, enquire
• Inquiry – exploration, probing, investigation,
examination, analysis, review, enquiry
Effective inquiry consists of powerful questions!
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3. Where can we learn the power of inquiry from?
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life
depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55
minutes determining the proper question to ask, for
once I know the proper question, I could solve the
problem in less than five minutes.”
- ALBERT EINSTEIN
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4. Do you know the seven powers of questions?
Questions
1. demand answers
2. stimulate thinking
3. put us in control
4. get people to open up Source: 7 Powers of
Questions, Book authored
5. give us valuable info by Dorothy Leeds
6. lead to quality listening
7. get people to persuade themselves
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5. How can we learn more with this agenda?
• Why powerful questions?
• What are powerful questions?
• How do we go about asking powerful questions?
• How can we retain the takeaways, stay
connected and share our coaching experiences?
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6. Why powerful questions?
Powerful questions
• Initiate reflective and productive conversations
• Surface assumptions
• Generate enthusiasm and energy
• Provide focus on attention and inquiry
• Induce more questions
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7. Which ones do you prefer?
• Are we doing well in this iteration?
• Which user story are you working on?
• Did you do unit testing?
• What does it mean to provide quality
deliverables to our testers?
• What risks exist that we have not thought of
yet?
• What is the possibility we see now?
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8. How can we construct powerful questions?
Why,
How,
Who, What
When,
Where
Which,
Yes/No
questions
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9. Do you know?
• Sometimes ‘Why’, ‘How’, ‘What’ questions can
be damaging!
Examples:
• Why do we have unfinished stories?
• What makes our folks be on IM all the time?
• How can we even think about such a bad
design?
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10. What can be a good set of examples?
• Are we satisfied with the quality of code we
deliver?
• When have we been most satisfied with what
we deliver? How did we accomplish that?
• What is it about our way of writing code that
you find most satisfying?
• Why might it be that the feedback on our code
quality has had its ups and down?
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11. How about these?
• As a team member how can you write high
quality code so that we can meet our goal of
delighting our customer?
• With your experience in writing high quality
code, how can we enable our team in writing
similar code?
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12. Why does the scope of your question matter?
• How can we educate everyone in our
organization in writing high quality code?
• Why don’t you take ‘code quality’ as an initiative
at our business unit level?
• As a team member how can you write high
quality code so that we can meet our goal of
delighting our customer?
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13. How do we read underlying assumptions?
• Can we do something to produce good quality
code? (assumes that nobody in the team has
written good quality code)
• How can we learn from the other project team
about writing unit tests and adopting TDD?
(assumes that nobody in your project can
contribute)
• Why is it not working? Why has it crashed? 
• Can you help me understand the situation? 
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14. Which would you prefer?
• Why do we receive these customer complaints?
Who is responsible? What did we do wrong? Can
someone explain?
• What can we learn from our customer’s email
and the current situation? What are the possible
options do we have? How can we help each
other and serve our customer better? Any ideas?
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15. How about these?
• How can we improve quality and do things
faster as compared to the other team?
• How can we collaborate with the other team
and understand which of their practices will
work for us and provide benefits?
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16. How can we become collaborative coaches?
• Collaboration can be nurtured through genuine
questions
• Genuine questions, when powerful will result in
genuine answers
• That is a virtuous cycle!
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17. How about going through this checklist to
formulate powerful questions?
1. Is this question relevant?
2. Is it genuine?
3. What do we want to accomplish with this
question? What kind of questions,
conversations or emotions can be triggered
when we ask this?
4. Will this question invite fresh thinking/feeling?
5. What beliefs and assumptions are hidden here?
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18. What can be good additions to this list?
6. Will this question increase our focus on
problems and shortcomings? Or will this
question generate hope, engagement,
collaboration, action and new possibilities?
7. Does this question leave room for new and
different questions to be raised as the initial
question is explored?
Adapted from Sally Ann Roth
Public Conversations Project c.1998
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19. What are the tips?
• Prepare your questions
• Eliminate the questions that are less powerful
• Rehearse
• Go through the checklist
• Apply
• Experience the process of inquiry and improve
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20. What is your take on this session?
Source: http://quotesandsayings.in/the-greatest-enemy-of-knowledge/#
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21. Did we miss anything in our agenda?
• Why powerful questions?
• What are powerful questions?
• How do we go about asking powerful questions?
• How can we retain the takeaways, stay
connected and share our coaching experiences?
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22. Don’t we like to stay connected?
LinkedIn: Raja Bavani
Twitter: @rajabavani
Blogs: http://www.mindtree.com -> blogs
http://www.blogs.mindtree.com
http://se-thoughtograph.blogspot.com
http://rajabavani.blogspot.com
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23. Any questions? Are we ready for some action?
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24. Thank You!
26-Oct-12 www.agiletour.com