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Tip 40 - The Power of Questions
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Looking for answers? It helps to ask the right questions, the ones that bring you to the core of any issue and help propel you towards a solution.
It’s not just the question that is important, but also: the environment in which the question is asked; the way the question is asked; and the reason behind asking the question.
Let’s examine a few of these aspects so that you can use questioning to the greatest effect and become excellent at asking questions.
So what promotes deeper thinking and answers of substance?
I think there are two main answers to this
- Active listening (See Tip 31)
- Quality Thinking Time
Active Listeners are:
- Genuinely interested in the reply and willing to let it change them in some way
- Prepared to wait for answers
- As interested in the responses of others as they are in their own
- In tune with circumstances surrounding the topic as well as the content
Quality Thinking Time
- Depends upon everyone being comfortable with silence
- Depends on everyone being seen to be comfortable with silence
- Is filled with the energy of curiosity, which will be balanced by the energy of thinking and feeling
What are some great questions to ask?
The right question at the right time helps uncover a world of possibility. Here are six powerful questions that you can try on any challenge you are currently facing:
- What would make the biggest difference in your life?
- What would you consider your three greatest strengths?
- What are you doing well currently?
- What could you be doing better?
- What one thing could you begin to do right now that would make a difference?
- How can you utilise each of your strengths to help you achieve your goal?
When working with someone who is stuck, this set is useful for helping them to move on:
- Who knows about the problem?
- Who cares about the problem?
- Who can do anything about the problem?
- What are you trying to do?
- What is stopping you from doing it?
- What can you do about it?
- Who knows what you are trying to do?
- Who cares about what you are trying to do?
- Who else can do anything to help?
- What have you learned from that?
- What questions does that raise?
- How can we help someone move forwards on their issue?
- Can you think of three options for action?
- What are the pros and cons of the options?
Managers can use questioning to: motivate their staff; get to the bottom of situations; challenge problems; and be supportive
Here are some example questions that may be useful:
Creating motivation
- What’s important to you about doing or not doing the task or action?
- And if there were one thing more?
- What do you want to achieve, or avoid?
- How else might you achieve/avoid that (answer to previous question?)
- What unintended consequences could you be faced with by continuing (the current action?)
Getting to the bottom of situations
- What are you/we assuming about the situation?
- How did you decide that?
- I’m wondering, what evidence do you have for believing that?
- What can we see/hear or what facts’support this?
- What else could be true?
Challenging problems
Good for handling “I am frustrated/stressed/etc.” and “I can’t,
because … “ type statements.
- How do you know? ( or ’How did you decide that?’)
- What prevents you?
- What would happen if you could?
- Has there ever been a time when you did?
- What was different then?
Supportive
- How is this a problem for you? (Good for issues expressed in long, vague, convoluted and all encompassing statements.)
- What is the best way you have handled a situation like this in the past?
- What are the moments of choice?
- What is the first step you can take?
- And the next step?
Why ask questions in the first place?
Here are some reasons why questions are asked:
- To signal an interest in hearing what someone feels and thinks
- To stimulate interest and awaken curiosity
- To encourage a problem solving approach to learning
- To help someone externalise and verbalise their knowledge
- To encourage thinking and exploratory approaches to situations
- To help people learn from each other and to respect and evaluate everyone’s contributions
- To keep someone constructively ‘on-task’
- To evaluate progress
- To discover extent, level or lack of knowledge
N.B.
At this point it’s interesting to consider the effect of a ‘Why?’ question and the way it is asked. ‘Why’ tends to elicit answers about beliefs, and so can be quite challenging, so ask these questions with care and consideration.
How do you learn to ask good questions?
- Maximise your curiosity. Get interested. Really interested.
- Write down questions. Don’t just hold them in your thoughts; frame them in writing.
- Start a little book of questions - to capture and catalogue questions as they happen.
- Write down 100 questions. You can create the questions in categories. After you practise asking questions for a while, you will discover some great questions for yourself.
- Become fascinated by how things work and by finding ways to improve the situations around you.
- Focus on seeing how things work rather than ‘being right’, or having readymade answers.
- Encompass the whole range of Kipling questions. Practise looking at an object, or a word, and asking six questions about it.
- Look at the people around you and replace any opinions or ‘likes and dislikes’ with questions. Let yourself wonder what moves them; why they do what they do.
- Next time someone says something and you immediately are tempted to just respond with your view, ask a question instead, eg: “What makes you think like this?” or “What makes you feel like this?”
- Listen to what you say and ask: “why did I say this?”
- Practise asking questions instead of making points.
A coach can help you refine and improve your questioning skills and in many other ways.