The Art of Questions

I have been contributing to people’s ah-ha’s (educating others) all my life. I realized just how powerful that could be when I told a neighbor-boy (we were both about 7 years old) that Santa didn’t physically exist and all the logical reasons why. The fall-out from that little bit of truth was shocking to my little brain. Why was he so traumatized and why were his parents so upset at me? It was the truth wasn’t it?

My mother explained to me that saying things to someone that are so dramatically different from their own understanding is like hitting them in the face with a fish – it hurts, it’s shocking, and now it’s more about what I did to them, rather than being about the truth. She suggested I try asking logical questions and let them see the truth for themselves. Ahhhh, the birth of the Socratic method in my little mind.

It worked just fine when I helped my best friend understand that she wasn’t born by being found under a cabbage patch in the bayou. Of course, her parents were upset with me, but I didn’t care, she knew the truth and we were still friends. Ok, so she was a little traumatized over the pictures I showed her, but that’s another story.

Now I contribute to people’s ah-ha’s by providing training sessions, conference workshops, meeting presentations, coaching, and mentoring. My areas of specialization include communication, leadership, presentation development and public speaking, employee development, group facilitation, and training of trainers (which is a huge topic in itself). Oh, and now through a blog.

The point, you ask? Learn the art of asking questions to facilitate learning. The questions you ask will either facilitate or squash the learning. For example:

Squash: Why did you do it that way?

Using the word why typically puts people on the defensive. Instead of answering in a way that explores decision-making, they begin defending their decision.

Facilitate: How did you decide to do it that way?

There is no implied judgment in this question. It simply asks the person to reflect and consider their decision making process.

It’s not that you’ll never use why in a question, just be aware of the potential consequences (good and bad) of the questions you ask.