Finding the solution to a difficult problem lies in asking the right questions. On the afternoon of Sept. 1, in a stylish office building in Aoyama, a gathering of Japanese life coaches practiced this Socratic skill in groups of four. It was a role-playing exercise, in which one person played the role of a client with a problem, and the other three took turns asking questions.
As I walked around the room, I caught snippets of the kind of questions that you often hear in job interviews.
"What do you want to do in four year's time?" one man asked. The "mentee" of the group, a bearded man in his late 40s, silently considered the question.