Review of Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills by Stoltzfus

Asking skills..

In this book review, you are going to learn the single most important skill in coaching, which is asking skills. “The single most important skill in coaching is asking powerful questions” says the author along with twelve other professional coaches who bring numerous options, examples, exercises and illustrations not only for the beginning coach, but any level of coach.

The master coach trainer Tony Stoltzfus joins with 12 other professional coaches to present dozens of valuable asking tools, models and exercises, then illustrates these coaching strategies with over 1,000 examples of penetrating questions.

Stoltzfus starts out the book by saying that this is not a guide to coach by, but rather a place to preload powerful questions so you can use them when you are in the moment you are coaching your client and not reading a script. 

The book is divided into 6 sections: Getting Started, The Coaching Process, Life Coaching and Destiny Discovery, Life Coaching: A Better Life Today, Advanced Asking Skills and Coaching Niches. 

A lot is packed into 97 pages of content from session structure to marketing plans to conversation model and challenging situations. With every section covered, the author provides side panels that cover application of the skill learned, quotes that reinforce what is being learned and hints and tips. Also he has included a “for more” pane that links the skill covered to other places in the book which I found invaluable! And the index in the back is topical so you can quickly find questions that help with specific coaching situations. 

In this book the author lays out a coach’s guide to powerful asking skills

Diving into the book itself, I used my highlighter generously. Included are the top ten asking mistakes, closed- ended questions making the top of the list. The author also covers the GROW model of coaching and the coaching funnel model. After introducing the life wheel assessment, he continues to touch back on it throughout the rest of the book, showing what a valuable and versatile tool it is. 

The exercises provided with each section are for coaches to practice getting better at things like defining the problem or finding the gap in a client’s life, or the coach’s life! I’ve marked lots of the exercises to go back and do for myself later.

The section on coaching niches was quite broad, covering small business coaching, organizational coaching, career coaching, coaching writers, wellness coaching, relationship coaching, ministry coach and cross-cultural coaching. This is the section where the author brought in other professionals to lend their expertise in each area of coaching. It’s more of a snapshot of what coaching in each niche field looks like, rather than an in-depth study of each one. 

I’ve owned this book for quite some time and have dipped in now and again but never seriously sat down and read it cover to cover. Boy am I glad I did! I highly recommend this book to coaches of all levels. Tony Stoltzfus has done the heavy lifting and we all benefit by being able to take our coaching questions to the next level. Read this book and prepare to “become a master of asking.” 

Thank you for reading my book review.

Want to read it for your self, you can find the book here: Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills

Interested in another book that can help hone resilience skills? Try Teach Yourself 50 Techniques to Be Strong

We hope you enjoyed our book  club selection for July, 2021. Learn more about our book club and how you can earn NBHWC-approved continuing education credits  by reading along with us here here.

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