What is it about questions?
So why the focus on questions? What’s the big deal about questions?
I remember when my daughter was little and was talking for most of her waking hours, and sometimes when she was asleep too. She asked many questions, sometimes the same one over and over again. I think this peaked when she was about four. In a sense it was ‘stream of consciousness’, externalised thought. She hadn’t learnt to edit what she said for the situation and so just said all of it. As you can imagine that was a testing time!
I had to judge which questions to answer and which to ignore. I also had to work out how much information to give in response, judging what constituted ‘a need to know basis’ for a four year old! I’m sure I got it wrong quite often, but my attempt was to keep some balance in the conversation, not to burden her with a lot of information to digest but staying present as she learned how to have a good conversation. I tried not to ask her too many questions or to give her too many choices, again not wanting to burden her while she had so much inner work to do with her own thoughts. She didn’t need to be weighed down by my intellectual involvement in her flow of thinking aloud.
That was about a four year old, but as I was remembering that time and thinking it through I realise what good practice that was for coaching conversations – not that I have any four year old clients or clients who never stop talking! However, a client in a coaching session can give themselves the space to express aloud what they have been holding inside. My job as a coach is not to burden them with too much input of my own or to ask too many questions.
That’s part of the big deal about questions, not asking too many of them. The other aspect is asking thoughtful questions that can help someone to develop their thoughts and to move forward. That’s equally true of coaching conversations and of any personal or professional conversation. It’s helpful to develop a good repertoire of questions and that’s where my book ‘Good Question!’ comes in. You can see how different coaches, including Jesvir, use their questions to bring about positive change.
Jesvir Mahil’s question is, of course, an interesting and unexpected one. In ‘Good Question!’ She asks ‘How Does Today Fit In With Your Forever Plans?’ I won’t tell you what Jesvir says about that question in case you want to read it for yourself, but I do like it, a lot. Even without exploring it much it’s a helpful question because it lifts my spirits. It puts today in the context of something bigger, the ‘bigger scheme of things’ as they say. Even though today may be about quite mundane things it can be a step towards where you want to be heading. Asking about ‘Forever Plans’ is a call to be considering what really is important amongst all the things to do bobbing around in the stream of consciousness of the day.
We may focus on all sorts of things in the course of a conversation or a day, and a question like ‘Where does Today Fit in Your Forever Plans?’ May help to highlight what is really important. That is a big deal.
Judy Barber,
Author of ‘Good Question! The Art of Asking Questions to Bring About Positive Change’ www.thinkingblossoms.com www.judybarber.net
