Over the years, I’ve learnt to trust my recurring observations before I can explain them.

This week, two seemingly unrelated coaching conversations kept colliding in my mind, but it took me a while to understand why.

I've noticed a shift in my coaching conversations.

Not with every leader, but often enough to make me think.

In the past, people have sought coaching for clarity, confidence or both (even when they name it something else). They have openly sought another perspective, a better question, or someone to challenge their thinking. Baked into that was an assumption that enough of the right information would make the right decision obvious.

Increasingly, I'm seeing something different.

I've been fascinated by questions for a long time.

Enough to write a book about them. Enough to create a deck of conversation cards. Enough that many people assume asking great questions is the heart of what I do.

They're not wrong.

A well-timed question can change the direction of a conversation. It can expose an assumption, surface something that's been sitting just below the surface, or help someone see a situation from a completely different angle. Questions create movement when people have become stuck in familiar ways of thinking.