ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION
My friends Peter, Robert and I were discussing the merits (or otherwise) of AI recently.
“It’s great” said Peter. “You get some really helpful information. Just so long as you ask the right question”.
Just like humans then!
I’ve been coaching now for 21 years, and that comes after 26 years in international business management. But it fully dawned on me recently (I’m a slow learner) that clients don’t pay me to use all of this experience to solve their problems for them. At any rate, not most of the time. Occasionally we might get lucky…
They pay me to ask the right question.
Asking the right question, it turns out, is not easy.
It involves listening hard and for extended periods. Sometimes several hours.
It involves NOT jumping in quickly with my story, and my experience, and completing the client’s sentences for them.
It does involve synthesising all the experience embodied in them with all the experience embodied in me, and then having the confidence to pause, and say (to myself, but quite honestly often out loud) “So let me get the next question right”.
Because getting that question right determines where the conversation will go next. And next. And next again. Are we learning something new together here, or going towards a dead end?
So that’s a coaching skill. But maybe we can all benefit from this.
Great leaders and managers know how to do it. They recognise that their team will often know far more about the subject under discussion than they do, but that by asking the right question they can open-up new thinking in that team.
Great teachers know how to do it. Likewise great parents, mentors, counsellors. Great friends maybe. And preachers.
Many great preachers don’t claim to have all the answers. Who does?! But they do know how to ask great questions. And if we go back to the Bible, Jesus asked an awful lot of questions. “Who do you say that I am?” was not a bad one for starters.
I can think of potentially very good leaders, managers and (yes, even) preachers who are almost paralysed by their need to know all the answers. So they hesitate to step into those roles.
It’s not about knowing all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions.
And that, ultimately, is perhaps about a lessening of my ego needs, and giving someone else the chance to learn and grow.
If you enjoyed reading that, and would quite like to receive one every month or two, there’s a box below where you can sign up.
We will never send you anything except the stories. And if you’re interested in reading a bit wider, maybe there’s something here for you - https://martin-howden.squarespace.com/books. In any event, thanks for reading.
