Coaching practices for The Morning Questions with My Team

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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • My one-on-ones always open with a status check
  • I end every meeting with "any thoughts?" and get nothing but nods, then the real objections surface in the hallway afterward
  • When I check in on myself it’s always "how did the day go," and the answer always seems to ride on things outside my hands
  • I’m hitting every productivity target and somehow feeling emptier by the week
  • I start these tracking habits full of intention and then they fall apart within a week

Practices that may help

  1. The Morning Questions
    Marshall Goldsmith’s morning questions are a daily active question routine in which you score yourself each morning on whether you "did your best" to pursue specific values-based commitments the previous day. The practice reframes self-monitoring from passive measurement ("how did X go?") to active responsibility ("did I try?"), which research on active questions suggests produces greater engagement and honest self-assessment. The evidence base is practitioner-clinical; large-scale trials are limited.
  2. Open with "What’s on your mind?"
    The best opening question is also the most open — it invites exactly what the person most needs to talk about.
    The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like
  3. Invite input explicitly and specifically
    Ask for candid input on a specific topic — not "any thoughts?" but "where do you see this plan failing?"
    Psychological Safety in Teams
  4. Reframe passive questions as active questions
    Ask "did I do my best to...?" rather than "how was my...?" — the word "try" changes what the question measures.
    The Morning Questions
  5. Include a happiness question — not as an outcome goal but as a signal
    Add "Did I do my best to be happy today?" to the list — not as a target, but as a daily quality-of-life sensor.
    The Morning Questions
  6. The daily scoring ritual
    Score each question at the same time each day — consistency matters more than perfect accuracy.
    The Morning Questions
  7. Design a personal question list that matches your current growth goals
    Build a short list of active questions that track the behaviors most relevant to your life right now — not a fixed template.
    The Morning Questions
  8. The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like
    Michael Bungay Stanier’s seven questions — from "What’s on your mind?" through "What was most useful for you?" — are a practical system for coaching conversations that takes less than a minute to learn and a career to master. The framework is practitioner-derived from behavioral coaching practice; its mechanisms are grounded in autonomy support, self-determination, and the generation effect. The questions work because they shift the cognitive labor back to the person who owns the problem.
  9. Ask "And what else?"
    The first answer is rarely the most important one — "And what else?" pulls out the one that actually matters.
    The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like
  10. Ask genuine, situational questions
    Pull contribution out with real questions instead of waiting for people to volunteer.
    Psychological Safety, Made Practical

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