Great questions create great outcomes

The right questions at the right time are essential in successful meetings and workshops. Good facilitators use great questions for great outcomes.?

Asking good questions at the right time is a key facilitation skill that can make or break any session. Getting this right differentiates a presenter from a facilitator and engages participants from the start.

Yet questions can easily be over-used which can be irritating. It’s important to know the purpose of each question you ask. Recently I watched a facilitator enter a room and ask everyone, ‘Who knows what this means? Anyone? Anyone? C'mon, anyone?'. The participants visibly shrunk back against the walls. The facilitator proceeded to explain the answer in a condescending tone. It was awful to observe and set this facilitator up as a challenger rather than a collaborator. Don’t do that. That's seriously not a good use of questions.

I often work with what I call ‘accidental facilitators’. These are people who don’t call themselves facilitators but find themselves in front of groups in meetings, workshops and conferences and who need facilitation tools. In training (or what I prefer to call a focused learning opportunity) I encourage simple but powerful questions at the right time. Participants report that this creates a change of engagement of those they work with and better outcomes overall.

There are three sets of questions that are key to any great meeting, session or workshop.

1. The first and most important questions are about expectations.

When people articulate what they want, they tend to take responsibility for reaching their own goals. Asking, ‘What would be the best outcome of this session?’ is essential in any meeting or workshop. I like to say, ‘When you walk out of this session what will make you look back into the room and say 'that was really worthwhile’?.’

Checking expectations allows you to adapt the planned material to the needs of those in the room. You can also engage participants so that they commit to having their own needs met and understand the benefit they can get and the contribution they can make.

2. The second question or set of questions is about who is in the room.

Knowing who is present is great for building connections and inviting participation. Ask questions that uncover at least two aspects of your participants. You might ask where people have come from (geographically) and what their content area is.

Instead of answers that are directed at you as a facilitator, you can request that they stand when their geographic area is called, and remain standing. Then you ask them to sit when their content area is called. Adapt this to two aspects that are important to the outcome of the session you are in.

3. The third set of questions is the ‘ask, don’t tell’ questions.

A great facilitator gets their ego out of the way and asks the participants what they know before filling in the gaps. This technique can be used in almost any setting. Ask questions that invite participants to explore the topic, and apart from answering direct questions asked by the facilitator, you can also invite answers in a mix of what I call The Engagement 1-2-3:

1. Answering questions alone (writing exercises) or
2. Answering questions by discussing in pairs (‘turn to the person next to you and discuss x or y) or
3. And answering questions through group discussion (for example, divide the group in one of many ways to answer a question set for the group).

In fact, if you just change your style from telling to asking or enquiring, you encourage engagement, retention of the material, and a feeling that the time spent is worthwhile. Those I train find that by just increasing the ratio of asking to telling, they turn didactic learning into engaging connection with better outcomes.

Be sure to be curious, and really listen. Then questions will come naturally to you, and you'll see that your great questions really do create great outcomes.

*First published on Smallville.com.au