Play Life Coach With Your SMEs

How life coaching techniques can help you to gain the most from your SMEs

Subject matter experts (SMEs) have essential experience that can help proposal teams prepare winning responses. Therefore, it’s key to keep SME conversations open and engaging so the SMEs can provide the best information in the (usually) short time available.

Proposal teams often send SMEs the client’s questions in hopes that the SMEs will have the time and inclination to provide draft responses. While that may or may not happen, it’s always a safe bet to engage with SMEs in the most meaningful ways possible.

Coaches prefer to ask open-ended questions so as not to diminish people’s resourceful states by inviting restricted “yes” and “no” answers.

Drawing a Parallel

Pulling from my experience as a business and life coach, I’d say that proposal managers and coaches have more in common than you might think. Coaches ask questions to help unlock people’s resourcefulness. The same principle applies to interviewing SMEs to obtain the most relevant information for the best proposal responses.

Coaches prefer to ask open-ended questions to avoid diminishing people’s resourceful states by inviting restricted “yes” and “no” answers. The same is true in SME conversations: You want to keep the SME’s mind open to new lines of inquiry and innovative thinking.

Let your SME give you as many measures of success as possible.

Keep These Interview Questions up Your Sleeve

The following are some questions you can use with your SMEs, not necessarily in this order. These examples prompt further exploration. After the SME provides an answer to any question, you can always ask, “What else?” to tap deeper into his or her experience.

  1. What would it look like if the project were totally successful? This is a good question to start the conversation because it invites the SME to provide high-level thoughts that will form prompts for further questions.
  2. What would you suggest if current constraints weren’t an issue? In coaching, this question frees the client’s mind to think of the best outcomes in an ideal world. The conversation progresses to considering ways of overcoming whatever holds the client back. In bidding, this question often kick-starts a dialogue about innovation, leading to discussing ways of improving how things are done.
  3. What should be the first thing we do [in this topic]? The SME’s experience means he or she will know what prioritization is usually appropriate. The follow-up question, “What makes that important as a starting point?” leads to understanding process detail, sometimes highlighting that the usual prioritization isn’t currently appropriate.
  4. What’s the biggest challenge we face [in this topic]? Opinion about this may differ between SMEs, so it’s definitely worth asking the question to better understand the issues and risks. Ask “What makes that challenging?” if you need more detail. As in coaching, avoid asking “Why?”—because that question risks closing the SME’s mind by prompting justification of previous remarks instead of keeping the mind open to new lines of thinking.
  5. What might impact our ability to achieve [objective]? This is the proposal equivalent of the coaching question “What might prevent you from doing [action]?” The question prompts discussion of blockers and facilitators, and of innovation to overcome blockers. It’s a useful opener to exploring risks and resource challenges, without constraining the discussion only to those issues.
  6. What does the industry need to change to be better at this? The coaching equivalent is, “What do you need to be better at?” It’s important to understand what end-user outcomes depend on industrywide improvements, enabling you to show in your proposal your approach to raising the standards of your profession.
  7. What lessons have we learned, and how can we use them here? Coaches would say “you” instead of “we.” Either works with SMEs, depending on whether you’re exploring the SME’s own learning or his or her knowledge of the organization’s learning.
  8. What’s worked well in the past for [objective]? This question goes alongside No. 7, adding the dimension of adapted approaches to lessons learned. In coaching, the question helps clients appreciate their abilities based on past achievements. In bidding, the question is useful for exploring examples of evidence to corroborate claims of credibility in your proposal.
  9. What other resources do we need to achieve [objective]? The same question is effective in coaching, recognizing that clients might not be able to achieve their goals single-handedly. SMEs know what extent and type of resources are needed for tasks, which is important for developing credible messages in proposals.
  10. How will we know when we’ve achieved [objective]? Coaches ask their clients, “If you don’t know what success looks like, how will you know you’re there?” Likewise, your proposal clients want to know that you understand measures of success. Let your SME give you as many measures of success as possible. With the proposal team, you can decide how to relate them to your client’s key performance indicators.

Holger Garden, Ph.D., CP APMP, is a bid consultant, chartered civil engineer, and founder of Mercury Communication & Strategy Ltd., a bid consultancy in London, England. His coaching experience stems from his training at London’s The Coaching Academy. He can be reached at holger.garden@mercury-cs.co.uk.

Join the Conversation

  1. Mike Harris

    I am a Life Coach and Executive Coach, in addition to being a Proposal Manager and Writer. There is much truth in what Holger has said in this article. I have been a stand-out for years as a writer? Why? Because I cared enough about the SMEs to ask the questions they needed so that they could give me the information I needed to write their story.

    As an example of how SMEs appreciate being asked the right questions with an attitude of caring and not demanding, I will mention here about when I was hired as a contractor at a major telecom about 8 years ago. When times were good, after they were awarded a potentially lucrative IDIQ contract, they hired four writers into the Proposal Group. A year later, when the financial belt was tightened, two writers were let go, one was cut to 20 hours per week and subsequently left, and I was ‘incentivized’ to stay. The justification given for my retention was that I was the only writer consistently requested by engineers, program managers and their senior leadership. It pays to care enough to ask the right questions, not just the team as a whole, but the SMEs as individuals.

    reply