A coaching question is an open question that doesn’t suggest an answer, and instead prompts a mentee to think through a situation themselves — unlike an advisory question, which is really advice disguised as a question. A toolkit is a set of proven, open questions grouped by mentoring-relationship stage, so a mentor need not rely purely on instinct.
Quick Overview
What you’ll learn:
- How a coaching question differs from an advisory question
- A case study of rolling out a question toolkit at a mid-size IT company
- A table of questions grouped by the stage of a mentoring relationship
- The most common mistakes when asking coaching questions
Who this article is for:
- Internal mentors building their own toolkit for working with a mentee
- Mentoring programme coordinators designing supporting materials for mentors
- Managers combining the role of supervisor with that of mentor for team members
Reading time: 6 minutes
Coaching Question vs Advisory Question — How They Differ
An advisory question sounds like a question but carries a ready-made answer: “Don’t you think you should talk to the client first?” is advice disguised as a question — the mentee hears a suggested solution, not an invitation to their own reflection. A coaching question leaves the space open: “What did you consider before deciding on this step?” doesn’t suggest any specific answer.
In its core coaching competencies, the International Coaching Federation stresses that the quality of the questions asked of a client (or, in this context, a mentee) is one of the central competencies, alongside active listening and building trust. A mentor who asks only advisory questions is, in effect, advising rather than mentoring — and that weakens the mentee’s independence in future decision-making.
Case Study: Rolling Out a Question Toolkit at a Mid-Size IT Company
A software company with roughly 120 employees introduced a mentoring programme for new team leads, but after the first few months mentors reported that conversations “went in circles” — a mentee would describe a problem, the mentor would advise, and the topic would come back a week later without any real change. The fix was a simple question toolkit: cards with questions grouped into four stages of a conversation (exploring the situation, identifying options, choosing an action, committing to a specific step) that a mentor could have on hand during a conversation instead of improvising.
After rolling out the toolkit, the programme coordinator observed that conversations more often ended in the mentee committing to a concrete action, rather than just listening to the mentor’s advice — mentees came back reporting steps they’d taken, instead of describing the same problem all over again.
Coaching Questions by Conversation Stage
| Conversation stage | Example questions | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Exploring the situation | ”What exactly happened?” “What’s hardest about this for you?” | Understand the situation from the mentee’s perspective, not the mentor’s |
| Identifying options | ”What options do you have?” “What else might work?” | Widen the set of solutions considered before choosing |
| Choosing an action | ”Which option fits your values best?” “What speaks in favour of this choice?” | Support an independent decision instead of imposing one |
| Committing to action | ”What will you do this week?” “How will you know it worked?” | Turn reflection into a specific, checkable step |
The Most Common Mistakes When Asking Coaching Questions
The most common mistake is asking closed questions that can be answered “yes” or “no” — they don’t invite reflection. The second is phrasing questions that are actually advice (“Wouldn’t it be worth…?”). The third is moving too quickly to the action stage before the mentee has fully understood their own situation, which leads to decisions made without real reflection and more often abandoned at the first difficulty.
How to Build Your Own Question Toolkit
Building a toolkit doesn’t require a ready-made template copied off the internet — the most effective sets grow out of questions that proved themselves in a specific mentor’s real conversations. It’s worth starting with a few questions per stage, testing them in real conversations, and noting which ones actually led to a breakthrough in the mentee’s thinking and which felt artificial or off-topic. After a few months, a set like this naturally grows into a personal, proven toolkit — not a list copied from a guide.
Mentoring programme coordinators can go a step further and build a shared, company-wide toolkit that every mentor contributes questions to as they find ones that work. A collective resource like this shortens the ramp-up time for new mentors joining the programme — instead of starting from zero, they get access to proven questions developed by more experienced colleagues.
Read Also
- Guide: How to Create and Develop a Mentoring Knowledge Book — how to document good mentoring practices, including proven questions
- Mentoring Programs: Employee Development — how to build a mentoring programme from scratch inside an organisation
Build Your Skills
This topic connects to the Mentoring and Coaching: The Basics of Effective Support and Coaching Skills: A Practical Workshop courses. Check the program and sign up to build your skills with EITT’s experts.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How does a coaching question differ from an advisory question?
A coaching question is open and doesn’t suggest an answer — it invites the mentee to reflect for themselves. An advisory question sounds like a question but actually carries a ready-made suggested solution, so the mentee hears advice instead of an invitation to reflect.
Why do mentoring conversations “go in circles” without a question toolkit?
Because without a structured set of questions, a mentor often defaults to advising instead of asking — and advising doesn’t build the mentee’s independence in decision-making, so the same problem keeps coming back in later conversations without any real change.
How do you pick a question for the stage of a conversation with a mentee?
At the exploration stage, questions about facts and feelings work well; at the action-choosing stage, questions about values and consequences; and at the commitment stage, questions about a specific, checkable step and a deadline.
Does a question toolkit make mentoring conversations feel less natural?
No, as long as it’s treated as a reference point rather than a rigid script. The case study shows the toolkit helps a mentor get back on track when a conversation naturally drifts into advising, rather than replacing a genuine conversation.