15. |
Ask a Bigger Question |
I believe it was Mark Victor Hansen, cocreator of the wildly successful Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, who said, “If you want a bigger result, ask a bigger question.”
If you listen to people’s conversations, particularly around the water cooler, you’ll hear an endless diatribe of disempowering questions such as, “Why do I get all the lousy assignments?” and “Why don’t I ever get a break?”
Asking focused and well-formed questions is one of the most powerful techniques we can employ in any situation, especially in the workplace. Try using a series of empowering questions first thing in the morning as a way to start off your day feeling good about yourself and the day ahead.
Simple questions such as, “What am I looking forward to today?” “What am I happy about today?” and “What am I grateful for today?” will enable you to begin your day on a more positive note.
Unfortunately, too many people ask questions such as, “Why do I have to go to work today?” “Why do I have to get out of bed so early?” and other disempowering ones that do little more than undermine what good feelings they may have had and put them in a less-than-great mental state as they begin their day. Right from the start they are defending their lack of success with a “why me?” attitude.
After all, they think, rich and successful people don’t have to get up early and get to work. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth; highly successful people are typically the first ones in the office in the morning because they are excited about their work and their lives.
If you want to escape this trap and be happier and more productive at work and in your life overall, begin to formulate better questions. We human beings are conditioned to ask and answer questions. Whether or not you agree with that statement, you had to ask yourself a question about how you felt about it in order to form your opinion. If you ask someone a question, chances are she will respond. Even Yogi Berra, when asked, “What time is it?” responded, “You mean now?”
You can learn to harness this powerful questioning technique to foster good feelings and increase your success on a particular project.
At work make a habit of formulating powerful, intuitive questions such as, “How could I do this better and more effectively?” and “What’s great about this situation?” By making a habit of using powerful, positive, engaging questions daily, you will take a huge step in managing communication with yourself and in making yourself feel better in any given situation.
If, for example, you work in sales and your monthly goal is to add three new customers, you might formulate a question such as, “What could I do this month that would result in adding twelve new customers?” This question would force your mind to come up with a very different answer than if you were to ask how to acquire three. Remember, “If you want a bigger result, ask a bigger question.”
I believe that one of the problems individuals and companies have is the habit of asking small, uninspiring questions that, in turn, produce small results. When I published my first book one of my core questions was, “What can I do to sell a million books?” This was beyond bold, considering that the average book if its type sells maybe a couple of thousand copies and that I knew nothing about book selling at the time.
Looking back, asking that question was one of the smartest things I ever did, because it forced me to look at book marketing differently and, in turn, to take actions that were markedly different from the norm.
The result? In my first year in the publishing industry, we sold more than one hundred thousand copies of Handbook to a Happier Life. This made me an instant celebrity among small publishers and enabled me to build a career as an author.
In your company, instead of asking what you could do in order to be promoted to your boss’s level, you might ask, “What steps would I need to take in order to become qualified to rise three levels above my current level?” A question of this type would, by necessity, cause your mind to churn out answers that are radically different from those that would follow a “smaller” question.
Make a practice of tapping into the enormous capability of your mind by asking focused questions. And “If you want a bigger result, ask a bigger question.”
• Write four or five empowering questions you can ask to start off your day on the right foot.
• What new question could you apply to your greatest work challenge right now?