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. 

‘Any questions’ isn’t the only question

If there’s silence, people may not know what to ask; perhaps they don’t have anything to ask!

Maybe they’d like to share a story or an insight or make a comment. 

Comments and opinions have had a bad rap over recent years. 

Remember what would happen at a conference? Someone would approach the microphone and they didn’t have a question; they had a comment. They wanted to add their view and we’d get snappy about that. “Hey dude, questions only please!”

Why don’t we want to accept comments and opinions? Why are we only after questions? 

Question and answer is an interview or interrogation. It’s not really a dialogue or conversation. 

It’s a limited view of contribution, participation and interaction. 

Let’s allow anything!

I’ll often say ‘so ... questions, concerns, comments, compliments, complaints?’ 

That usually brings a smile to people and opens up the scope for all that is invited and welcomed. 

And then come all of their wonderful contributions, stories, learnings and insights. 

Magic!

‘Any questions’ is not the only way we can engage and connect with people. 

Invite more. 

“We want this session to be interactive”

Yes. We do too! 

There’s only so much listening or just watching of slides we can handle. Meeting after meeting or an all-talk workshop can become a bit much ... after a full day of it, a week of it or six months of it!!

So, plan ahead for interaction. 

🌟Ask a question and for the response to be in the chat box or to share an emoji

🌟Ask a question via a poll and see the results 

🌟Share a story and ask for stories

🌟Use the Spotlight feature (in Zoom) to feature a few people at a time in panel style, group share or a fishbowl conversation 

🌟Hear several people’s stories and weave them together, finding common themes or threads 


If you’d like the session to be interactive, you can be sure the team, guests and participants will probably want it to be interactive too. 

🌟Allow the time. 
🌟Vary the activities. 
🌟Encourage ... and then let the interaction happen. 

Loosen the grip on controlling all of the information. There’s some magic waiting there to be made. 

Who engages first

In a meeting or conversation, who goes first? 

Should I be actively engaged, in anticipation that you may or may not be engaging? 

Or should you be so engaging that you capture and hold my attention? 

Or can we both pay just enough attention to get by? 

So who’s job is engagement? 

The crowd says, “it’s everyones job!”, yet we still kind of suck at it. Engagement levels continue to remain low in Organisations the world over. 

Paying attention is one thing; being interested and connected to a topic, project, people or idea over a period of time is something else.

It takes work, energy and ongoing attention. 

How do we engage with people more effectively? 

Some say 
- Tell more stories
- Show more empathy 
- Have more conversations
- Ask more questions
- Focus on what’s in it for them. 

And what else?

What’s your tip - how can we be more engaging in these times?