The power of questions

How are you doing? This is a simple question that has the power to make us think about ourselves by doing a complete checkup.

What was the best thing that happened to you over the weekend? What was the most annoying thing? These questions can bring us positive or negative emotions.

What if questions had the power to make us make a different decision than we would have made if there had been no question? These are the powerful questions, and I will tell you three examples:

1. A change of heart

A few weeks ago, my wife and I arranged to go with friends to a tango class.

The dance studio is near the home of one of the friends, who invited us to have a cider there before the class. When we arrived, this friend had guests. One of them had never tangoed before and was not going to take the class, even after we told her that it was a beginners' class, so there would be more people there with no experience.

Almost giving up on her, I asked her: When do you think you will have again the opportunity to learn tango in the company of friends?

She decided to come with us and loved it. This is an example of a powerful question that led to a change of heart.

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2. Raising awareness

The second story took place last summer. I was invited to a presentation session for a company that does executive counseling.

The presentations were a bit grueling, but I stoically resisted. At the end there was a networking moment for the participants to get to know each other. We all went out into the garden. Each member of the organization gathered his or her guests in a circle and asked each one to introduce himself or herself and say why he or she had come.

The first presentation: I am Maria, I am the founder of a cost reduction consulting company, and what I do is analyze your contracts for energy supply, telecommunications, insurance, etc.

The second presentation: I am Manuel, I worked for 20 years in the automotive industry and a year ago I started a robotics company and I am overcoming the challenges of being an entrepreneur with no support from anyone.

And another series of similar presentations naturally centered on themselves, until it was my turn. If I presented myself like them, possibly no one would pay attention, so I remembered to start like this:

"How many of you have ever felt held hostage by information technology? This is what almost all of the clients who come to me have in common, whether they are business owners, CEOs, and presidents."

"And how many of you have IT contracts with dozens of pages of legal clauses, but the scope boils down to one paragraph? Maria certainly knows this situation. This is a very clear sign that you are being held hostage by the IT vendor, IT itself or both."

We all changed business cards. Do you know what happened? The next day, Maria called me asking me to help one of her clients who was being held hostage by IT.

3. Providing clues

The third story took place when I met a former colleague and friend who is an independent consultant. She said happily that she had started a project in a company owned by a former colleague of ours. When I asked her how this former colleague of ours followed up on the project, she told me that he had delegated it to someone younger than both of them. After a few months, we spoke again. She told me that the question I had asked had been essential to involve the owner of the company and ensure the success of the project.

This was the happy ending I would have liked to have happened. But it didn't. When we met, my friend said that the project had started to go wrong and had ended abruptly at a scheduled meeting in a coffee shop.

She told me that the question kept echoing in her head and that she should have acted on it.

?These three examples show that questions can be much more powerful than statements or advice, because they put the other at the center.

We can use questions to influence decisions, we can use questions to raise awareness for our cause, and we can use questions to give others clues to solve a problem.

To conclude, I want to set you a challenge, dear reader:

the next time you are tempted to give advice to your better half, your children, your best friend, or your colleagues, why don't you try using the power of questions?