<aside> 💡 About this template:

Magic Questions (Lite & Lightning) is the speed version of the full, longer Magic Questions. If you have enough time to, I’d recommend getting through the longform version.

Sometimes though, we don’t have enough time to get through the full Magic Questions with our teammates. Or, because the full version of Magic Questions takes trust, we might not know someone deeply enough to go through all of it.

In these cases, I recommend using Magic Questions (Lite). These hit the essential questions on the head and provide fodder for further discussion and trust-building.

If you know your teammate well, you could even do Magic Questions (Lightning), which is even faster. You just score numbers, say what would make it better, and jump straight into action on optimizing your life.

Feel free to duplicate this template into your own personal Notion. I’ll also include a downloadable asset at the very end. Good luck!

</aside>

Magic Questions (Lite)

Use this version for a longer-form discussion if you are trying to get to know your teammate better, but there isn’t enough time to go through the entirety of Magic Questions.

For each question, ask your feedback giver to score it from 1-5, where 3 = meeting expectations.

• What is it like being on your team? What about this company?
  • What’s good:
  • What I wish were better/what would make it a 5:
• What is it like working with me specifically?
  • What’s good:
  • What I wish were better/what would make it a 5:
• How is your personal life - family, friends, and individual mental/emotional/physical health?
  • What’s good:
  • What I wish were better/what would make it a 5:

Magic Questions (Lightning)

This is the same as Magic Questions (Lite), except you skip straight to what would make things better. This should be reserved only if you’re trying to solicit feedback and you already trust each other deeply.

Please score each question below. 3 = meeting expectations.

• How is your work life?
  • What would make it better? (Think about: your relationship to the team, your relationship to your manager if you have one, how excited and motivated you are, how focused you think we are.)
• How is it working with me?
  • What would make it better? (Think about: my communication style, how well you trust me, how we could trust each other better, how we could work with each other better, what I could do to improve)
• How is your personal life?
  • What would make it better? (Think about: your relationship to family, friends, yourself emotionally/physically/mentally)

Downloadable PDF version (save to your Files)

Magic Questions (Lite + Lightning).pdf

Downloadable PNG version (good for saving to Photos)

Regina Gerbeaux (@_rpgbx) is an executive coach to some of the fastest scaling startups in the world. Prior to that, she was COO of companyOS/Mochary Method, Chief of Staff to Matt Mochary, and Head of Operations at On Deck.

Regina was the first person Matt taught to coach using his coaching methodology. She now enjoys open-sourcing her write-ups about operational excellence and providing tactical templates and frameworks to use from an operator point of view. If you are interested in getting coached by her, reach out here.

If she’s not busy making Notion templates, reading, writing, eating, or sleeping, you can find her likely at a 6am Orangetheory class, out on a hike, or on Twitter (or writing about herself in the third person and trying not to get weirded out by it. Like right now.)