10 Coaching Questions for Library Managers

As librarians, we are professional answer-finders. A patron or student walks up to the desk with a question, and within minutes we have located the book, the database, the form, the STEM kit, even bakeware or fishing poles if you have a “library of things!” It’s a beautiful skill. It’s also the skill that quietly gets in the way once we become managers.

When a staff member brings you a problem as a manager, your reflex is to solve it. Quickly. Neatly. Possibly with a citation. And every time we do, we teach our team to bring the next problem straight back to our office, instead of puzzling out possible solutions for themselves.

Coaching questions break that cycle. Below are the ten I come back to again and again: six to ask your staff and four to ask yourself, plus a quick primer on why they work and how to phrase them.

Why Questions Beat Advice

Advice feels efficient in the moment. It's quick, It's helpful, and it lets us cross something off. But, the cost shows up later: a team that waits for instructions, a manager who can never step away from their inbox, and solutions that never quite stick because nobody besides the boss had a hand in them.

A good coaching question hands ownership back to the person closest to the work. People commit more fully to solutions they come up with themselves.

A few phrasing guidelines make a big difference:

• Keep it open-ended. Start with "what" or "how" instead of questions that invite a simple yes or no.

• Skip "why." Even with the kindest intentions, "Why did you do that?" can land like an accusation.

• Ask one question at a time, then let the silence do some work. (Yes, the silence will feel like an eternity. Count to ten in your head.)

6 Coaching Questions to Ask Your Staff

1. What’s working?

Start every one-on-one here. It gives you a reason to celebrate and praise, and it makes the meeting feel safe for anyone who has survived a bad boss. It also counters our brain’s negativity bias, which would happily spend the whole meeting on what’s broken.

2. What’s not working?

After you’ve laid the foundation with plenty of positive emotion, you can open the door to problem-solving. When staff name what needs improvement themselves, they also start to own the fix.

3. How can I support you?

This is the question that keeps us from swooping in to fix everything ourselves. Follow up with specifics: What tools do you need? How much time off desk would help?

4. What else?

My all-time favorite, borrowed from Michael Bungay Stanier’s, “The Coaching Habit.” The first answer is rarely the real issue. Ask "What else?" and a complaint about a coworker might turn out to be about something much bigger that was flying under the radar.

5. What’s a good deadline for you?

When the deadline starts in the staff member’s head, they own it, and nobody has to play deadline detective later. 

6. What do you wish your last manager had done differently to support you?

This one is gold for new managers inheriting a team. It surfaces old expectations ("I could never do that with my old boss") before they turn into friction.

4 Coaching Questions to Ask Yourself

7. What does success look like? And, what does it look like if this isn’t done well?

Answer both halves before delegating a task, and nothing important gets glossed over. Bonus: it creates a written record if a performance conversation ever comes up later. (See my Cheat Sheet for Clear Delegation.)

8. What can I delegate, pause, or eliminate?

Ask this regularly to clear space for visioning, coaching, and celebrating your team instead of drowning in the small details. Then follow up with: How will I share this plan with my team?

9. What would I like to change about myself, or about how this group works together?

This replaces the far more tempting "What would I like to change about them?" After looking honestly at the energy each person brings, it puts the focus back on what we can actually control and influence.

10. What would it look like if I were thriving right now?

This is a stepping stone to a deeper question: How do I define success apart from whether the people around me are thriving? If the answer feels fuzzy, start with what you don’t want and work backward.

Lead With Curiosity

Swapping answers for questions won’t feel natural at first. Our fingers itch to fix things. That’s okay. Every question asked instead of answered builds a team that thinks for itself, owns its work, and needs us less for the small stuff, freeing us up for the big stuff.

Start small. Pick one question from this list and bring it to your next one-on-one.

Ready to go deeper? Asking powerful questions is a core emotional intelligence skill, and It's exactly what we practice together in the Emotionally Healthy Leadership Series.