What’s your sequence of questions

When we need to gather information from people, engage with them or elicit details, it makes sense that we ask questions. 

In preparation for that conversation, collaboration, interview, podcast, enquiry, meeting or consultation... what’s your question sequence? 

‘Winging it’ lacks strategy and can miss out on important things. Even though we may like to ‘go with the flow’ of a conversation, you can still prepare a sequence of questions and riff or flow within and around them. 

Consider:
What do you need to find out?
How will you get things started?
How will you open it up?
How will you dive in or probe further?
How will you determine what the real focus/problem/situation is? 
How will you bring things to a close?

Questioning is a learned skill and our mental cupboards that store questions are in need of a tidy up, refresh and renew.

Instead of thinking of ‘a few questions’, consider the sequence that will get you where you need to be ... efficiently and effectively. 

What’s the order, what’s first and where is it going? 

Bringing 3 skills together

A skill on its own is good. Another skill... even better. Three skills? Three times the goodness! 

The skills and capabilities we have work well on their own. But when they’re combined and integrated - even better. 

Working with a group of business analysts recently, we took the three skills of :
- questioning 
- facilitating
and
- visualizing 
and integrated them. 

Beyond just using the skills on their own individually, one then the other, then the other ... we used all three at once. Integrated. 

Engagement was better. 
Elicitation of requirements was easier. 
Progress was faster. 

These three skills can work well with each other, leverage each other and make our roles and challenges easier. 

For the team of business analysts, it was an experience I call a ’skills lift’.

Greater confidence and capability. 

And an exponential return on one, two, three skills, multiplied and amplified when they’re working together. 

6 ways we’re overloaded

We know what overloads and overwhelms us: information, overwork, deadlines, social issues, politics, uncertainty. 

While we need to keep a handle on managing our own overload, it’s important to consider others and how we might be overloading them...accidentally or unknowingly.  

Here’s how we overload:
1. Meetings are too long
2. Focusing on the work for too long
3. One person speaking for too long. 

These are about the pressure and expectation we have of ATTENTION. There’s no break and pressure piles up with no relief or release. 


And then there’s:
4. Rambling, unstructured information 
5. Too much context or background 
6. Lengthy presentation packs. 

These are about the quantity and types of INFORMATION. We expect we can keep processing, analyzing, digesting and synthesizing information... endlessly. 

All 6 of these overloads are “too much”: too much unreleased pressure and too much wrestling with information. 

Combined, they lead to the reduced engagement, slowed progress and increased confusion of overload. And exhaustion. 

Take each in turn and use it as a kind of gate, filter or checklist. 

We can’t expect others to ‘just deal with’ what we haven’t considered, constrained or refined. 

Managing the overload

It’s not just information. It’s emotions and overwhelm too. It’s workload, decisions, news, and everything that changes. 

Our ability to make sense of what’s going on is often in overdrive as we juggle complex issues and our reactions to them. 

So there is the information. 
And there is our reaction to it. 

The information can be overwhelming. 
And so can our response. 

Acknowledging there is a load is a good place to start. 

There’s a lot going on. Don’t expect to get your head around everything that’s happening all at once. 

Sense is made by looking back on things. 

And our responses to that can come and go for some time. 

We don’t need to be an automatic victim to overwhelm. 

Make sense of it step by step, piece by piece, scene by scene. 

What’s on your radar

What’s up ahead? Can you see it? 

We check the weather to see what the forecast will be like: what’s predicted and how we might need to be prepared for it, to respond and adapt to what’s coming. 

I love the rain radar. It’s always changing. As showers or storms drift frame by frame, they change in nature and shape. 

The way they look now, where they are now ... it can change. 

You think it’s heading one way and then forces make it move and shift in a slightly different direction or speed. 

What do you see ahead... in this task, project, process, team or product? 

Do you have a hunch of what might or could happen? 

How might what you’re in now, change? 

Be ready for what’s ahead. And be prepared to adapt and change. 

To be able to roll with it, go with it, or be able to handle whatever the forecast - now that’s a great mindset. 

Chilling with a likelihood for change.