5 great mentoring questions for managers
Updated: Feb 17, 2023
To be a brilliant leader, ask the 5 questions in bold below, in every catch-up with your direct reports. To be better than brilliant, read all 20 questions and pick a few others you will use too. Research shows that staff are more effective and motivated when their manager
listens more than they talk
allows them to own their work
enables them to find their solutions to their issues.
This happens when you ask your staff good questions.
What other questions do you like to ask your staff? How can you use these in other interactions too? Build your own list of favourite questions, and share them in the comments section below.
1. How are you?
2. What strengths and skills have you used recently? (How can you acknowledge those?)
3. What is on your mind that you want to discuss? (your top issue)
4. Where do you want to get to, by the end of this conversation?
5. What feels important about getting there?
6. What feels good, and less good, about where you’re at now?
7. What do you need, to help you move forward?
8. What options do you have? And what else? And what else?
9. What might you be overlooking?
10. Who might you talk to? Who has done this before?
11. What do you want?
12. Tell me more…?
13. What assumptions are you making?
14. What do you not know? How might you find out?
15. How useful is this conversation?
16. Where have you got to with your issue?
17. Do you want to summarise your next steps?
18. How likely are you to do the actions, on a score from 1 to 10... … and what will help you move closer to a 10?
19. What came up in this conversation that you want to think more about?
20. Anything else you want to say before we wrap up?