I’ve come to see that sound strategic thinking (once you have clarity of vision) boils down to having insightful, empirically validated answers to three essential questions:

1. Where to place our big bets?

1. How to protect our flanks?

1. How to extend our victories?

After interviewing thousands of candidates, I’ve found these three questions to be the most catalytic in terms of learning more about a candidate:

a. In some ways, we’re probably all occasionally misperceived at work. People see us one way, but—in truth—we’re different than that. What’s the most common way you’re misperceived?

b. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career? And why did you answer the question with this particular mistake?

c. At what skill are you world-class? And I’d be honored if you gave me some evidence of that talent?

Perhaps by asking the following questions you can appreciate the way coaching fits into your client’s array of commitments:

1. What could interrupt this coaching program for you?

2. How does coaching fit into what you’re already doing?

3. How will you respond when the program seems to be going too slowly, or gets boring, or repetitious, or even seems pointless?

We suggest instead a three-part response:

1. Ask what learning came from the project.

1. Don’t make a big deal about it.

1. Ask her to “sunshine” the failure.

1. Who/Where are your (juicy red) core customers?

1. What are you really selling them?

1. What are your three Brand Promises?

1. What methods do you use to measure whether you’re keeping those promises? (We call these the Kept Promise Indicators, a play on the standard definition of KPIs.)