The Coaching Habit

but it doesn’t typically have a place as a tool for managers to wield
in their organizational lives.
However, there’s insight to be gleaned here from a school of
therapy known as “solution-based” therapy. They have a go-to
question called the miracle question. Several variations exist, but
in essence it’s this: “Suppose that tonight, while you’re sleeping, a
miracle happens. When you get up in the morning tomorrow, how
will you know that things have suddenly got better?”
The miracle question helps people to more courageously
imagine what better (and much better) really looks like. A 10x
improvement, not a 10 percent tweak. But I think that much of its
genius is that it also deliberately focuses on the end before the
means. In other words, start with the end in mind rather than (as
often happens) collapsing the “what” of the outcome with the
“how” of the next steps and immediately getting discouraged.
The Foundation Question—“What do you want?”—is direct,
rather than indirect. But it has the same effect of pulling people to
the outcome, and once you see the destination, the journey often
becomes clearer.