Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

Lawyers are particularly adept at asking closed-end questions -- yes or no. It focuses the answer and purposely doesn’t encourage elaboration.

In the business world, the questions that add the most value are open-ended questions -- those that create a greater depth of response.  Asking smarter questions is an art.

 I often tell the story of a client of Northwestern University Adjunct Professor and Executive Coach, Kevin Murnane. He was working with an executive who wanted to leave her lucrative career in business to become a night club comedienne. 

 At a certain point, she was debating what she was willing to “give up” in order to make her dream happen.  Kevin looked at  her and said, “let’s reverse direction -- what are you NOT willing to give up?”

 A single word “Not” was added. The result?  A powerful, provocative and clarifying question.

Typically,  managers are not taught how to ask better questions.  The authors of the classic Co-Active Coaching, Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-house and Phil Sandahl, have done a brilliant job of categorizing questions based on situations and needs.  I have added some Inotivity questions to the list.

The brilliance is often subtle. If you’ve ever taken an psychological assessment test, you’ll notice that many questions are variations of the same questions.  These are complementary questions.  They are essentially looking for patterns and consistencies.

One of the challenges for managers who aren't as familiar with these kinds of questions -- is that they may appear "contrived" at first.  Once they become ingrained into your questioning approach, they will feel more like natural extensions of your thining style.

Here are some examples by situation:

Anticipation

 What might happen?

What if it doesn’t work out the way you want?

What if that doesn’t work?

And if that fails, what will you do?

What is your back plan?

Have you thought through alternatives?

Assessment

 What do you make of it?

What do you think is best?

What makes you believe that?

How does it look to you?

How to you feel about it?

Is there another way to look at it?

Clarification 

What do you mean?

What does it feel like?

What seems to confuse you?

Can you say more?

What do you want?

Will you summarize your thoughts in a sentence?

Evaluation

In what way?

Is this good, bad, or in between? In what way?

How does this fit with your plans/way of life? Values?

What do you think it means?

What do others say about what it means?

Exploration

May we explore that some more?

Can we take a closer look at that?

What other angles can you think of that?

What are some more possibilities?

What’s another way of looking at it?

Example

Will you give me an example?

For instance?

Like what?

Such as?

What might that look or feel like?

Elaboration

Will you elaborate?

Tell me more about it?

What else?

Is there more?

What other ideas to you have?

Do you think there’s more to the story?

For instance

If you could d it over again, what would you do differently?

If it were you, what would you have done?

How else could one handle this?

If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?

For instance?

If you knew you could not fail, what would you do?

Give me another example?