The coaching questions we ask under the first three headings of the coaching ARROW help the people we coach to decide where it is they want to go, where exactly they are starting from and how big the gap is between the two points.

We now need to help our coachees think through the various options they have in dealing with their issues and moving towards their aims.

The greatest pitfall here is for the person being coached to grasp the first idea that comes to mind. It may well be that this proves to be absolutely appropriate but the good coach will encourage their people to be highly imaginative and creative in considering options and to be constantly alert for new insights.

'Stuck' thinking

Most days I walk into my office via the front door and take the same route to my desk. I have done this for years and it can be evidenced by the carpet between these two points being markedly more worn than elsewhere. Imagine I was being coached on how I might arrive at my desk more alert and stimulated for the day's work. It would be very difficult of me to think of any alternative to my tried and tested route of the straight line from the door to the desk. In fact if any one suggested a different route to me I would be likely to say "It would take to long" or "it's a waste of time" or "I've never done it that way before" or "that's just not how it's done here". All of which may or may not be true.

But if my coach encouraged me to think creatively I might consider walking round the edge of the office past the window. As I thought about it I might realism that this would give me an opportunity to look at the river which I always find stimulating. In other words I will have hit upon a novel approach to achieving my aim.

Similarly, because I'm enjoying the coaching session and feeling free to allow my thinking to run a little wild I might think about moving from the door to my desk in a figure of eight. As I thought about that option I might realism that this would take me right past the table where I keep the books and articles I keep meaning to read but forgetting about, past the kettle which I could switch on as I went and finally past the computer printer which I don't normally pass and end up having to get up again to switch on later in the day.

In other words I have developed fresh insights and found new benefits just by unsticking my existing thinking.

New thinking almost always leads to new benefits:

In the early 70's Art Fry a technician at 3M wanted a bookmark that would neither fall out nor damage his book. He knew that a colleague, Dr Spencer, had developed a glue that could stick to most surfaces but that left nothing behind after removal. Art applied a little of this glue to a piece of paper and the Post-it note was born.

Breaking assumptions

Similarly people labour under certain assumptions about what is actually possible within situations at work and we tell ourselves that "there isn't enough time" or "we haven't got the budget" or "I don't have the authority".

Again these thoughts may or may not be true but it is very useful in a coaching session to allow people to be free of these constraints to see what other options might become available. So we might ask "What if you had more time, what could you do?" or "What if you had more money…?" and so on.

Of course we cannot pretend that there aren't any barriers or restrictions but what we're really trying to discover through coaching is whether these barriers are genuine or just assumptions. It’s even possible that what was a restriction some time ago may not be the case any more - we just assume it is.

A distribution manager wanted to reorganize the routes his company used to supply dairy products to a number of grocery stores in their region.

He was told his new routes would not work because the stores furthest out wanted their deliveries on a Monday and would not accept any other day.

However, the distribution manager spoke to the storekeepers and discovered that, although they wanted a fast reliable service, they were not concerned about which day of the week their deliveries took place.

Sometime later, at a social event, a retired delivery man explained that deliveries to the outermost stores had always been made on a Monday because the horses were fresh after their Sunday rest!

In my next article I will examine how we decide which option to pursue as we map out the Way Forward.