I have been thinking a lot about Questions over the course of the last couple of years. My curiosity started while I was pondering why my teenaged daughter might have been so uncharacteristically forthcoming one afternoon about her plans for the future. Reflecting on it with my supervisor, @sue white, I realised that perhaps I had for once not initiated the conversation with a question. At least not a verbal one. Rather something about my body language had said ‘tell me’. So she did.
Since my interest in the subject was sparked, I have of course found it coming up all over the place. Isn’t that always the way when you start to notice things?!
It came up as part of some training we were delivering recently for a client introducing an internal mentoring scheme. We explored what can encourage and/or hinder someone else’s thinking. Silence is often the most powerful prompt for someone to deepen their thinking. Overly complicated questions can interrupt the flow. Some questions, however, especially when they are brief and use the thinker’s own words, can be helpful. The purpose of the question is not to extract information to help you as the listener better understand the situation. Rather they are to shine a torch at something the thinker has said so that they can see it more clearly, to further their own understanding of what they think, believe or know.
Last week, a coaching client said that she feels she doesn’t ask enough questions. My wondering what sorts of questions she felt she ought to be asking led to an interesting exploration. What are questions for? Whom do they serve? Which questions are needed in which situations? And when is it best NOT to ask questions.
And again just yesterday, another coaching client ended our time together pondering the sorts of questions she could ask herself, daily, to get clearer in her own mind about the things she would like better to be able to articulate to her colleagues.
The letter I wrote to my daughter a couple of years ago, following my insight, concluded with this: “What questions that I could I ask you would serve YOU rather than ME? I guess I can’t know that. So perhaps I won’t ask… But know that I am always here and always ready to listen to the answers to the questions you wish I would have asked! And if the answers you give me spark a question or two from me in response, I will offer them. But they will be just that – an offer. If they don’t serve you, let them go. And so will I.”
