Find Better Answers – Ask Better Questions
We ask questions to learn. When a coach asks questions, it’s to help others:
- Learn about themselves.
- Expand their potential.
- Find their path forward.
- Deliver results.
- Enhance their fulfillment. (Most important.)
Curiosity has a darkside.
The darkside of questions:
- Making a person feel like they are being interrogated. Sincere curiosity may feel pushy.
- Leading people to your conclusions. When you “know” the solution for another person’s issue, you ask questions that suggest the “right” answer.
- Concern over motive. I’ve had people ask, “What are you after,” when I was simply being curious. People may wonder if you’re trying to find fault or weakness in them.
Ask better questions if you want better answers.
Better questions:
Coaching-managers ask questions that lead to fulfillment, energy, and performance.
- Give space and opportunity for coachees to learn about themselves.
- Provide opportunity to reflect on their journey.
- Make people feel important.
- Connect. The first “not good” in the creation story is, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
- Create situational learning moments.
- Consider next steps.
The first word of better questions:
- What?
- How?
- When?
- Who?
- Not why? Why is often a distraction in coaching sessions. Even when exploring purpose, “What’s important about that,” is more useful than, “Why is that important?”
Strengths more than weakness:
The temptation to dig into weaknesses, shortcomings, and faults invites people to talk negatively about themselves. It better to focus on strengths, even when dealing with weaknesses.
- How have you succeeded in other situations?
- How might that relate to this situation?
- How have you worked through challenges in the past?
- What outcome would you like to achieve?
- What’s the first imperfect step toward your desired outcome?
How might leaders begin asking better questions?
Thanks again for the very insightful post! One way that we try to keep coaching collegial is the frame of mind in which we approach coaching. When working with people it’s not a “we have to do this” instead we frame it as “we get to be together”. Sometimes that small shift in the way we present it can make all the difference.
Great question technique is a keystone to our coaching approach. One of the keys is to be warm, empathetic and interested. If you get too analytical in your approach you will come off as a machine gun – tat, tat, tatta-tat-tat – with question after question rolling out. Take time to explore and dig into what’s really working well. Yes, it’s good to be curious. But filling up on your own need to be curious doesn’t serve the other person. Be curious together. That will get you farther.
Like you, we don’t endorse the use of the word “why”. We leverage questions that start with “Share with me …” or “Tell me more about …” or “I’d love to learn more about your success with …”.
Another technique is to be intentional. Always. For example, if you pass someone in the hallway and ask “How was the Johnson appointment?” and they say “Good”, why not pause and ask “That’s great – what went well for you?”. That opens the person up to a deeper conversation.
Our best coaches excel at asking great questions. The best ones are the ones that cause a person to pause and reflect, often leading to a comment like “That really is a great question. I hadn’t thought about that …”. I love those moments. That tells a coach they are on their game.
I really like this one: “What outcome would you like to achieve?” The temptation, when facing a situation, is to jump quickly into working to address it. I firmly believe that such haste often leads to working on the wrong problem – or worse. Obviously – make sure you’re addressing the right objective. AND, depending upon the time available, consider that objective for understanding the task(s) at hand!!! Time permitting, better understanding will yield better outcomes. Again from Einstein: “We can’t solve problems with the same knowledge [and skills] with which they were created.”
Finally, the truism: “It always takes longer to ‘fix’ an inferior solution that it does to get the best solution initially!”
I also think it is important to not judge when listening to answers to one’s questions. I think judging creates that sense of nosiness people find off putting. Instead, when asking great questions, remain open and curious, asking questions to clarify instead of judging responses. I think this process helps us appreciate differing perspectives and leads to greater understanding.
Simple but powerful. One of your best posts! Thanks!
I’m curious if someone – Dan or anyone else – could elaborate or expound upon this question:
What’s the first imperfect step toward your desired outcome?
I’m curious to know the purpose and intentionality behind using the word “imperfect” when asking the question.
Thanks! SM
Thanks SM. Curiosity is a good thing. 🙂
I’m glad you picked up on the term, “imperfect.” We spend too much time perfecting before we go and not enough time perfecting as we go. I choose to add “imperfect” to words like, steps and progress.
Cheers
Hey Shawn: What a great a question to a question in a post on questions! Of course, Dan’s reply answers your question well: Most people either spend so much time wanting the perfect first step to move–or they never take the first step because they never find the “perfect” first step because there is no “perfect step.” And, he adds, it is much better to comprehend “imperfection,” and decide on action now—and then seek excellence in steps and progress as one goes. Of course, Dan has years of wisdom, experience, mentor, coach, and consultant in him.
While I am not a thinker, I love the challenge of questions—even though I do not see things in contemporary management terms, leadership perspectives, or even business light. I simply like to get things done, and I often wonder why others don’t just roll up their sleeves and go for it.
Respectfully, I think leaders are like junkies…addicts: They do not do things to get high, rather “not to get low.” Rather than having a predisposition to a problem, they wait for a conflict to arise between good and bad, for example–and bad wins…until they do something about it. WILL is power.
This scenario, in my estimation, is “imperfection”—and it is the first step to a desired outcome. I hope my imperfect analogy helps a bit.
Books and all –
I presume that you saw Dan’s reply. You’re correct that paralysis happens too often because of never finding the perfect plan (perfection is an ideal; probably is a perfect or correct plan – but because of the “certainty of uncertainty” we’ll never know it even if we stumble upon it) or not being able to begin because of the fear of failure…
I’ve come gradually that we should not even spend the time to get to our best plan. I’ve decided it’s best to plan to be pretty certain of a few steps, then assess / understand / plan more steps – continuing until get the optimum outcome given the constraints.
I’m thinking it’s more likely we’ll get the direction and first steps pretty well – AS IS SO IMPORTANT! But I think assessing those initial efforts and planning, contrasted with more planning / making initial efforts followed by assessing and revising, will be more effective and time efficient. Hope that can be followed…
Thanks Dan for this post! I’ve always been a strong advocate of the Socratic method and maieutics. It’s been one of my most effective tool in my team and project management tools arsenal. Simple and specific questions are agnostic from gender, age, background, experience, state of mind, etc. and the answers they trigger carry an abundance of information and insights. Answers come from the ego and questions from humility 🙂
Leader ask questions and a mature leader ask the probing questions in the form of what, how , when, where instead of why, why word itself signify a sense of negativity and immaturity and put the people in a defensive mode, a matured leader first put the other in a comfortable condition and then ask the question n and than coach if it necessitate. I have seen many leaders who most of the time instead of asking what you are doing, they ask why you are not doing this and start the conversation on negative note. If you further study the behavior of these leaders , it is evident thatnthese kind of leaders are selfish in nature and they out their work before anybody and they are more interested in their growth instead of grooming the leadership attributes in their people down the line. The why syndrome disconnect the people at the same time other question mark empower the people to put their arguments and it provide the space for self growth and development, and at the same time leaders also gets and opportunity to interact with the people across the worlds.
Dan, I am a believer that experienced coaches often bring back “ancient truths for modern purposes”—which tap old sources of strength for new tasks of difficulty: What’s new age is sometimes age-old. Often the answer to a question is contained within the question itself. “What can you do?” for instance, is easily answered by simply rearranging the same words, “Do what you can.” Sometimes there are simple answers, and are often exactly right.
A dimension to “asking questions” I would like to proffer to this post is how leaders must “not take answers personally.” Nothing others say or do is totally because of a leader. Often it’s on the other person. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they’re in a completely different mental world from the one leaders live in. The questions leaders ask are meant to create commonality, focus, betterment, creativity, and yes, even excitement and energy.
However, when others answer our questions not in accord to our thinking and we take it personally, we make the assumption they know what’s in our world, and we impose our world on their world. Even when a situation “seems” personal, and even if others insult us directly, it in all likelihood has nothing to do with us.
What others say and how they say it–the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own mind. Taking things personally makes us easy prey for even the best staff members. They can hook us easily with one little opinion and feed us whatever poison they want, respectfully. And if we take it personally, we eat it up. Yet, if we do not take things personally, we’re immune—even in the middle of a hellish discussion.
And like Lee Iacocca once told one of his managers: “I’m not here to win. I’d rather fight with you than make love to anyone else.”
Garbage in garbage out.
🙂