Today's thoughts come from "Find Out Anything from
Anyone, Anytime" by James Pyle and Maryann Karinch. The title seems a
bit combative, but it is really about how to ask good questions.
There is a lot to asking good questions. Here are three tips to asking more productive questions.
1. Only ask one question at a time. Now this seems
like a simple thing, and it is, but it is amazing how often people ask a
barrage of questions. This almost guarantees that the person being
asked will not answer them all to the questioners
satisfaction. They will most likely pick the one they like the most and
answer that. Even if they want to answer them all chances are they will
miss some.
2. Avoid Yes/No questions. Most of the time when
you ask someone a yes or no question they will expound on the answer and
give you more, but if the person is distracted or otherwise unmotivated
to respond you will end up with a one word
answer. Asking open ended who/what/when/where/why/how questions forces
more thought and opens the way for a more illuminating response.
3. Ask "what else?" When you want to know how
someone is feeling or what they did at school you don't have to settle
for the initial response they give you. Asking "what else" can go a long
way to finding out a more complete picture of
what is going on. Doing tech support I learned that this was a valuable
tool. The customer would give a single issue that they were dealing
with and many times I discovered later that there were other issues that
they knew about that they didn't tell me. So
when I kept pushing and asking what else until they said "that's it" I
ended up understanding much more about where they were in regards to
their problem so I could fix it. It save me a lot of time on multiple
occasions.
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