WHAT QUESTIONS WOULD WORK FOR ME?
OF COURSE, THE most effective questioners have mastered the art and skill of coming up with questions. They don’t necessarily need pre-prepared questions. However, there is untold value in having some. If nothing else, pre-prepared questions may provide a fallback, or default, to turn to in a gap in the conversation. In the context of this book, they are also offered as an illustration of effective types of questions and demonstrate the sequence in which questions might be used.
You’ll note that, in each collection of questions below, they begin with quite open questions, move gradually into more directive questions, and then typically finish with quite closed questions. Remember that, in all cases, the questions are just an attempt to get somebody to think properly about a subject of your choice and do so in a way that allows them to reach the right conclusion. In line with this, the real value of the questions is in the thinking they prompt and the answers they trigger. The quality of your listening and your discipline in remaining quiet after asking a question will go a long way to determining their effectiveness!
These questions are provided as examples and illustration; they are not intended to be prescriptive nor the only correct questions to use — there is an almost infinite range. Listed by situation, hopefully these examples will provide some clarity and provide you with a starting point.
1. Providing feedback to a staff member who you believe is reluctant to adopt a newly implemented process:
•How have you been going with the new process?
•Which aspects have you found most comfortable?
•Which ones are you struggling with?
•Can you tell me how you’ve been approaching those?
• What have you been doing to improve that?
•What impact will it have on the business if you don’t adopt this new process? What impact do you think that will have on you?
•What would success look like here?
•How are you going to approach this moving forward?
•What support do you need to access in order to utilise this process better?
•How will you begin this process? What’s the first action you need to take?
•When do you intend to start that?
2. Providing general performance feedback to a team member:
•Can you talk me through how you’ve been approaching this activity?
•What results has that been getting?
• What will be the impact of continuing to do it that way?
•How will you go about it in future?
3. Selling high-value solutions/products to a business-to-business prospect:
•How’s business?
•What’s most important to you?
•What’s frustrating you about …?
•What does it look like if it continues like that for a year or two more?
•How would you improve ...?
•What will that mean to the business and you, personally?
•How are you taking advantage of the … opportunity?
•What would an ideal outcome look like?
•What impact would that have on the broader business?
• If you achieve these goals, what would that be worth to the business?
•How does your organisation go about making these decisions? Who else is involved?
4. Creative thinking to innovate your product or service:
•What are five possible solutions to this problem?
•What is the most outlandish solution to this problem?
•Why do we do it that way? Why? Why? Why?
•What is the ideal? What would the perfect version of this look like?
•What could we combine this with?
•Where will this trend be in ten years?
•What unrelated innovations can we learn from?
•What would we do with double the budget?
•How important is that?
•What are three alternative approaches?
•What are the possible impacts of each?
•On a scale of 1 — 10, how motivated are you to achieve this?
•What can you do immediately to start down that path?
6. Negotiation:
•From your perspective, what are the most significant challenges/hurdles?
•Where/how can I assist you further?
•What’s the underlying issue?
•Rank your most essential requirements in priority order.
•On a scale of 1 — 10, how committed are you to each of them?
•How do you measure the value of each of them?
•Tell me a little more about …?
•Why is that?
•Please expand on that for me.
•How will you do …?
•What are the biggest assumptions that ... relies on?
•What specific evidence is there that supports ...?