I was coaching a teacher sometime back, and she had an issue with student learning in her class, and I was trying to explore her understanding of how students are learning, so I asked

"I am wondering how does your student learn?"

However the question she heard was "what are you doing to help student learn?" and she kept on explaining what she is doing. Similar things happen in our normal conversation as well like

Few days back I was talking to one of my friend, lets call him Mr X , when he suddenly asked me, "Hey Nitin, ask me a challenging question", I looked at him smiled and thought now that he has asked me I must give it to him, so I asked

"X, you always make commitment of doing one thing or another, but you never do it. Why is that?" My friend heard the question and kept staring at me for a while so I said " you asked for it".

He was not really trying to answer my question instead he was thinking why did I asked him that specific question. Am I trying to tell that he does not deliver on commitment? Question that got raised in his mind was very different than what I asked.

Both scenarios have common reflection point that question being answered is very different than the question being asked.

Several of such questions, like

"How did you feel?" or "How are you feeling?" if your client does not have a good grasp on expressing feelings s/he may go all over it and yet not express feelings.

"Where is that coming from?" several times this question is asked to explore what is causing a particular feeling, now in order to be short and crisp, sometimes we as coaches make are questions cryptic as well.

So the real question is the one that gets raised in mind of the person who you are asking, not the one you asked.

How can we get closer to what our coachees are thinking and help them go over the unexplored area?

Has that happened to you in your conversation? If yes what are some of those scenarios? Should we try and reduce the gap? What are your thoughts?