PROBE MIND

As a coach, I earn a living asking questions that allow clients to experience more fully their potential, personally and professionally.

For anyone who interacts with people — whether in friendship, a leadership role or as a parent or spouse — it’s far easier to tell people what to do. Telling is a demonstration of what you know and also demonstrates that the person doing the telling is in control. In any of the above relationships, telling creates an atmosphere of defensiveness and evaluation.

Developing the ability to ask good, empowering questions gives you the power to direct a conversation and its content. Good questions decrease rigidity and bring life and energy to a relationship.

It’s never too late to begin asking questions. It will take time to develop the ability. Part of the difficulty will be suppressing the comfortable and familiar response of just telling others what you think and why you are right. Once that initial awkwardness is overcome, the ability to ask good questions (and to wait for responses) will have positive impact on all your relationships.

Benefits Of Asking

GOOD QUESTIONS:

Asking questions requires more self-control, but is a much more powerful way of communicating than telling. There are three general types of questions:

Open-ended questions that seek the perspective of the person being questioned.

“What obstacles have you encountered in trying to finish the homework?”

Questions can shape perspective. Part of the power in asking questions is the ability to provide a different viewpoint the recipient may not be aware of or may have overlooked. One of my most effective is also very simple: “What is the impact of this decision on your family?”

Questions create trust in a relationship. Telling someone what they should do may feel productive, but it builds up resistance and defensiveness in the listener. A good question communicates that you value the other person’s opinion and insight and also allows that person to process the information.

Questions require you to listen. In a world saturated with social media, people are looking for an outlet to be heard. Asking questions shows a willingness to listen rather than speak, and good follow-up questions demonstrate good listening. Questions build influence. As you demonstrate you are a questioner and demonstrated listener, you also show there is safety in your relationship.

With that increased influence, rather than falling into the trap of telling what you think and would do, there is now the ability to ask questions closer to the heart. Questions develop ownership in the recipient. Solving other people’s problems becomes exhausting, and we sometimes enable when we give quick answers.

Asking questions requires the respondent to take ownership of a situation and think it through. Additionally, the solution is theirs, so the results will fall squarely in their lap.