Author: Craig Johns

By Craig Johns

Are you asking the right questions and how are you interpreting the answers?

Asking the right questions provides a powerful tool for a leader, manager or coach. The following piece provides an insight into how questioning impacts both the person asking and those answering the question, through a coach/athlete relationship. It is applicable to all industries and aspects of life.

“There is more learning in the question itself, than the answer.” 

Andrew Weremy

Utilizing questioning as a coach can provide a greater insight into the athlete in how they learn, understand and perform. Questioning encourages athletes to think for themselves and increases their involvement, responsibility, creativity, motivation and interest in learning.

A positive benefit of questioning is that it promotes increased levels of communication (2-way communication) between athlete and coach. Enhanced communication then leads to developing mutual respect and trust between athlete and coach. This “helps the coach understand the athlete better through enhanced communication, which could lead to recognizing the athletes emotional, social and life variables that are/were affecting performance.” [ITU2]

“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 5 minutes.” 

Albert Einstein

Questioning “helps athletes become more autonomous and continue to learn and explore when the coach isn’t there.” [ITU2] The athlete will learn to problem solve more effectively, have “confidence in their ability to analyze situations” [ITU2] and improve their decision making ability under pressure in a competition.

There are various types of questioning including closed (‘Yes’ or ‘No’, provides limited information), open (requires explaining in-depth) and leading (contains information the person asking wants to hear in the question) questions. Open questioning provides greater opportunities for understanding and learning due to the more detailed response. Questioning can also be classified further into [ITU2]

• Knowledge (attending to and remembering facts)
• Understanding (Interpreting meaning, translating into the athletes own words)
• Application (using information and solving problems by applying information in new and different ways)
• Analysis (Breaking things into parts: examining relationships; asking why)
• Synthesis (Create something new; construct; design)
• Evaluation (judging, assigning value, justifying opinions)

It has been found that “using bandwidth feedback with questioning maintains communication with athlete, allows the coach to gain a greater understanding of what the athlete is concentrating on and encourages athlete autonomy for their learning.” Bandwidth feedback sets an acceptable zone of performance and only provides feedback when the athlete falls below or excels above. Another way to create more effective results from questioning involves the use of a pause or waiting time to allow them to think before answering.

“Sometimes quiet people really do have a lot to say. They’re just being careful about who they open up to.”

Susan Gale

Reference – [ITU2] ITU Competitive Coaching Level II Coaches Manual pg 170, 171, 172

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By Craig Johns

You may notice that the worlds geniuses, gifted people and creative artists are different. They have unique characteristics that seem quirky, a bit weird and don’t quite fit into the normal way of life. So why are they somewhat social misfits, renegades and a real challenge to deeply connect with?

People who have a higher level of intelligence, creativity, willingness to contribute to society and possess an amazing talent, are those who change the world for better and sometimes worse. Let’s clarify who we are talking about:

• As an athlete, it would be a multiple Olympic Champion, World Champion, and/or World Record Holder.
• As an entertainer, it is someone who redefines musical genres; and produces multiple Emmy’s, Grammy’s and Oscars.
• For an academic, it could be someone with high intelligence, a Nobel Peace prize winner or discover a scientific breakthrough.
• In business, it is people who have revolutionised the way we work, a billionaire or successful multinational CEO.
• In society, it is those who build communities, effect social change or pioneer inspiration.

Everyone is unique and possesses their own blend of characteristics, but for some reason the high achievers of this world have something different that stands out in a crowd. It is not always the same characteristic/s but there is always some awkwardness to them. A good way to describe this is like trying to put the rectangle peg in a square hole as a toddler. It looks like it should fit, but just doesn’t quite go in there.

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Arthur Schopenhauer

The game changers of our world, start with a search for ideas, not necessarily for a known problem, but for a pure sense of curiosity. They tend to ask more questions than the every day person, as they seek to find a higher level of understanding, and an ability to outperform and deliver something never seen before or are even aware of. Their desire to contribute, create something different and go somewhere that no one else has been before fuels them to begin a long series of trials and errors. They do not fear failure, they in fact thrive on it as they know that with every failure they are learning and trending towards a world of clarity.

“Exceptional thinkers, it turns out, stand on common ground when they launch their arrows into the unknown.”

Keith Simonton

Life is not simple when it comes to creativity. Creative ideas have a tendency of rising to the surface whether we have the time or attention to deal with them or not. Expression of creativity is enjoyable but can also be a burden or a great challenge to those who are gifted, as ideas usually arrive in multiples. A creative person needs to make important decisions on which idea to explore further, ideas to shelve and those to disregard. They have to determine what is real and what is not, especially when no one else sees the idea through the same light.

“Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill.”

Nancy Andreasen

Highly talented people tend to be divergent in the way they think, as well as their interests, values and behaviours. Their appetite for learning is raised, as their minds run deeper and faster than the average person. They are often aware that they don’t fit in, but are unsure why. Their thoughts and feelings sit outside the box, and are uncomfortable and strange to most people. Tall poppy syndrome is prevalent in society and quite often the highly talented people are seen to have a somewhat unfair advantage over the every-day-person due to jealousy of them having higher observable abilities.

“High intelligence entails not just being able to learn new things quickly and easily, but affects a person’s entire experience of life. People with unusually high intelligence take in and acquire information differently, process that information differently. They frequently experience emotions and physical stimuli more intensely than others. They have motivations and drives, which others often find odd or bizarre.”

Rebecca Trotter

The high achievers tend to be optimists, who see puzzles and problems as opportunities, whereas others see them as barriers. They have a curious nature that thrives on multiple questions and ideas. Their instinct is to look at puzzles from a variety of angles, come up with multiple potential strategies and have a great hunger to find the ultimate solution.

“They may realize that they learn things more quickly and easily than others, but may be wholly unaware that others don’t share their endless curiosity and may not have the strong feelings about things that they do.  Highly intelligent people may also find themselves odd man out because it is in their nature to think and work outside of the box.  They may know that they are doing this, but may not realize how threatening and disconcerting this often is to others.  They can be blindsided by the negative reactions they receive for doing things which they see as positive.”

Rebecca Trotter

Gifted people often feel a sense of loneliness, awkwardness, alienation and deep anxiety as they find the pace and intensity of their thinking exhaustive, and their struggle to deal with most people finding it difficult to comprehend their abilities and actions. They may become impatient with those who are critical or unable to keep up with their problem solving ability and thought processes. As they are dealing with fundamentally different ways to interact with information they can feel ostracized from the rest of the world. Awkward social interactions can be common as their higher level of thinking, understanding and futurism is typically misunderstood and underestimated by peers, society and usually themselves.

“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

Carl Jung

Mental illness is commonly associated with the highly intelligent, gifted, creative and talented. Sometimes they can be high achievers as a result of their mental illness and other times they occur a mental illness because of the high levels of achievement. Common diagnoses of mental illness associated with high achievers include bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, alcoholism and drug addiction.

“I don’t think people understand how stressful it is to explain what’s going on in your head when you don’t even understand it yourself.”

Unknown

High-achieving athletes, entertainers and leaders tend to have an aura about them, be charismatic, enthuse energy and be very engaging. They have a natural ability to influence, lead and inspire people with ease. They may not always be the ideal role model, but have that ability to take you on a journey and sculpt your ideas and ways of thinking, for better and sometimes not.

“I like weird people… The black sheep, the odd ducks, the rejects, the eccentrics, the loners, the lost and the forgotten. More often than not, these people have the most beautiful souls.”

Unknown

From a cognitive point of view, high-achievers generate original, creative and unusual ideas. They have an innate ability to connect seemingly unrelated ideas, think abstractively and have complex and deep thoughts. Their imaginations are vivid, rich and have superior abilities to reason, generalise and problem solve. It is common for them to have excellent long-term memories, learn things quickly and think fast.

“Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity is characterised by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions.”

Unknown

Emotionally, high-achievers are highly sensitive, introverted, have a quirky sense of humour, a child-like sense of wonder, and are good observers. They perceive the world differently as they are aware of things that most people aren’t, and have a high tolerance for complexity and ambiguity. It is normal for high-achievers to be very passionate and experience intense feelings.

“Successful people never lose their sense of wonder and possibility. Instead they retain a childlike quality to see the world of opportunity.”

Robert Kiyosaki

Setting high standards for themselves and others, as a perfectionist, is common among high-achievers. They are usually very independent and autonomous. The search for meaning in life, finding patterns and seeking the ultimate truth, is a key driver for high-achievers. It is common for them to be overwhelmed by a wide range of interests and abilities. Their high drive and sense of destiny fuels their visionary outlook on life.

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 things that won’t work.”

Thomas Edison

Needing times of solitude and contemplation allows high-achievers to deal with their complex world of thought, understanding and spontaneity. Their persistent nature leads to sustained concentration on topics of interest as well as holding long attention spans.

Why do people like Steve Jobs, Margaret Thatcher, Roger Federer, JK Rowling, Albert Einstein, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bono, Lady Gaga, Leonardo de Vinci, Marilyn Munroe, Robin Williams and Richard Branson not fit inside the box?

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