The Art of Asking the Right Questions

“You can't get right answers if you're asking the wrong questions.”

Mark Victor Hansen

In communication in general there is one instrument that has a great power, but very often is hugely underestimated as a tool.

This is the ability to ask questions.

When I was at the beginning of my professional journey, I worked for several years in sales. Today as well, one of my main activities is selling our company's products.

After almost two decades of practice and observation of some really good and some really poor strategies for success in sales, in my experience there are mainly two types of selling options:

• Selling through speaking.
• Selling through listening.

And almost 3/4 of the people in sales are doing it through speaking. And there are reasons for that. One of them is that this is much easier. That's because the focus is always on the product and the seller. The bigger the experience and oratory, the greater the results. Of course, it has one huge disadvantage - often it doesn't take into consideration the most important part of the process, the client.

A small amount of the professionals use the second strategy - to sell through listening. It is more difficult, it usually takes longer, but in a long-term perspective is much more productive. The focus here is always on the client.

It is difficult because to be able to listen successfully one must listen actively. The idea is not to respond, but to understand, not to offer solutions, but to lead the client to what is best for him/her. It takes a lot of practice to achieve the skills required to communicate successfully. One of the key ingredients is the ability to ask questions.

Sounds really easy, but it's quite the opposite. It requires a great deal of hard conscious work and persistency towards the goal to achieve mastery. the first step is the ability to recognize the main type of questions:

1. Closed questions.
2. Open-ended questions.
3. Alternative questions.

The third type are the questions that offer the possibility to choose from two or more options.

The first type are the questions that require simple Yes/No answer. They are very limited in nature, so it is better to use them not as often as most of us are used to. They are also very powerful if used in the right place, e.g. when we want to have an agreement with our partner in communication.

The second type of questions are usually very difficult to master - to so called open-ended questions. A really powerful instrument of every successful communication. Because they require reasoning. The basic idea is to gather information with questions like Who, What, Where, When, Which, How, etc. I wouldn't recommend Why. The reason for that is that it often sounds accusative and it's a short way to say "Explain yourself". The better idea if we need to ask Why is to rephrase the question. For example with What is the reason for...?

If we, as professionals who ask questions, are able to create a state of mutual responsiveness with our partner in communication, this type of questions become a strong tool for achieving a great success in every situation of one to one communication.

When we have a clear goal and ability to listen to understand, we make other people feel appreciated, heard and understood.

Not exactly like in the old story:

A woman was walking down the street one day when she happened to see a man holding a monkey.

The woman asked the man, “Where did you find that monkey?”

The man answered, “In the street. Why?”

The woman said, “You should take him to the zoo. “

The man said, “That’s a good idea.”

The next day the woman saw the man with the monkey again.

She said, “I thought you were going to take him to the zoo.”

The man answered, “Oh, I did, and he really enjoyed it.

So today I’m going to take him to the movies.”

...

An effective communication strategy is a must for every professional regardless of the position in the hierarchy of the organization.

Our abilities to ask the precise type of questions, at the precise time and our capability to listen carefully what has been said and what hasn't been said are a crucial part of our journey to be effective both in our professional and personal one to one communication.

-Stoyan