Tools of the Trade: The Question
Chip Scanlan, writing in Poynter Online [Everything you need to be a better journalist…], has an article on Tools of the Trade: The Question.
Like journalists, facilitative leaders are interested in the gentle art of questioning. The quality of your questions has a critical impact on the quality of what you can achieve.
Scanlan’s article contains some effective exhibits of questions that don’t & do work. In each case, he teases out why they fail or succeed.
One indicator he gives is the ratio of question length to answer length. In one case the query, at 107 words, was longer than the 82-word answer. Conversely his Exhibit 3 illustrated:
…how a short question (27 words) invites and provokes a much longer (212 word) response. But it’s not just quantity; after all, some politicians and bureaucrats go on as if they were paid the word. Here the result is an answer that provides a nuanced, complete response that would help the reporter understand — and more effectively communicate to the public…
Finally, Scanlan ends with A Prescription for Healthier Questions which also works for the facilitative leader. Tips include :
- Whenever possible, prepare questions in advance.
- Ask open-ended questions. Questions that start with how, why, or what, or encourage a subject to describe, explain, and amplify have a better chance to provoke complete responses.
- One at a time please.
- Let the questions do the work.