5 Minutes on Asking Powerful Questions
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
Eugene Ionesco, French playwright
Asking powerful questions is one of our greatest tools as leaders.
It can help us empower our supervisees, encourage participation on a team, build and strengthen relationships, find the pause before we react…
It can also help us and others move through stress and uncertainty.
Asking powerful questions isn't about asking perfect questions, or getting answers. Sometimes there are no clear answers in uncertainty.
Through powerful questions we can pause, get curious, and see what emerges.
Ready to start asking powerful questions?
5 Tips for Asking Powerful Questions:
1. Powerful questions are truly open-ended.
In other words we can’t know how the other person is going to answer. For example:
What is important to you about this idea?
How are you feeling about this dilemma?
2. Powerful questions are not leading questions.
We aren't trying to tell the person something through our questions (for example: Have you tried XYZ?). Replace leading questions with questions like:
What have you tried already?
How are you making sense of this?
3. Powerful questions help us expand our understanding.
They help us understand the other person, the situation, or the possibilities better. We can see problems/dilemmas in a new way or identify what is emerging right now that can point a way forward. Try these questions from the Human Systems Dynamics Institute:
What do you know for sure?
What do you wonder?
4. Powerful questions come directly from deeply listening in a conversation.
Such as:
I noticed you just used the word [enter word here], what does that mean to you?
I’m curious, what is causing you to say [enter phrase here]?
5. Powerful questions start with “how” or “what.”
They avoid the question “why” because in uncertainty we don’t often don’t know “why?” Also, when we’re in a leadership position it can sound accusatory even if we don’t intend that. Try questions like:
What questions do we have?
What do we know for a fact?
How can we best support each other?
What has shifted or changed since last time?
What do we want to be same or different in the future?
What are the tensions here?
How does this fit our values or our goals?
Here's a quick reference guide of all 5 tips.
Want to get started using powerful questions with your team?
After your next meeting, help your team build their powerful questions muscles by using a What? So What? Now What? series of questions. It's based on the adaptive action formula from the Human Systems Dynamics Institute you can read about here.
After your meeting, pause with your team to reflect:
What? → How was that meeting for you? What did you notice/learn?
So What? → So what do we want to keep doing in our meetings? What should we stop doing in our meetings? So what does this mean for us as a team?
Now What? → What are the next steps?
Want more? Read about leading with inquiry here.