Questioning Skills

“One who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; one who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”

Chinese Proverb

During the course of many conversations we end up asking some questions. We ask questions for a variety of reasons; we may want to obtain more information, show that we are following the other person, or sometimes we may want to challenge them. Whatever the need, knowing what to ask and how to ask is a critical skill within communication that if mastered can pay huge dividends.

The best way to learn about different styles of questions is through examples. In this course all questions types are defined followed by examples so delegates can clearly see how they work in practice. Numerous real world conversations are also provided to demonstrate clearly how an exchange containing specific questions would work in practice. Bad questions are also explored which help the delegates to see their effect on a conversation and how these questions could change the way others look at them after asking such questions.

Being good at questioning others also indirectly helps you to become better at answering them by understanding the motive behind each question type. This is particularly applicable to manipulative questions which are also covered in this course in addition to good strategies for responding to them.

This course contains a series of optional exercises which you can incorporate in your course. These can easily extend the course to 1.5 days. Some of these exercises contain variations which allow you to customise them based on your delegates’ specific needs and background.

This course is also useful for managers or people new to management roles who usually need to ask lots of questions as part of their daily roles. The session on asking questions from a group is in particular useful for managers addressing a team or asking questions in a meeting.

In this highly practical course delegates will learn:

Questioning Strategies

• What are the benefits of asking questions?
• What do we want when we ask questions?
• What strategies help you to get the most from your questions?
• What are positive and negative questions and what are the implications of asking each type?

Coaching Questions

• What is the best way to ask questions from people you may wish to coach?
• What types of probing questions can you ask to better understand the other person’s needs?
• How to empower people
• What are bad coaching questions and how to avoid them?

Information Questions

• What is the most effective way to get as much information as possible with the smallest number of questions?
• How can you systematically ask a series of questions to guide a conversation towards a topic of your choice?

Establishing Rapport

• How to ask empathic questions
• How to make the other person feel more comfortable and trusting
• How to use a simple yet powerful questioning technique to encourage the other person talk and reveal more about themselves and their inner thoughts

Motivational and Engaging Questions

• How to ask questions to inspire others
• How to ask questions to seek agreement
• How to ask a series of questions while simultaneously giving information? What is the benefit of this approach

Group Questions

• How to ask questions from a group of people
• What issues can you expect when asking questions from a group and how to address them?

Manipulative Questions

• What are manipulative questions and why should you be aware of them?
• What are examples of such manipulative questions and how should you respond to them?
• How to answer a question with a question of your own

Selling Questions

• What questions are effective when you want to sell an idea, product or service to others?

 

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 or 1.5 days.

Course Level: Beginners & Intermediate

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

• Use effective strategies when asking questions and avoid methods that can be counterproductive
• Ask practical questions when coaching others to help them and to strengthen your relationship with them
• Ask well-formulated questions to maximise information transfer
• Systematically ask a series of questions on a topic to find out more about it
• Ask empathic questions to help establish rapport and encourage others to talk more
• Inspire and motivate others by asking well-formulated questions
• Ask effective questions from a group of people to keep them engaged and increase their responsiveness
• Understand the nature of leading questions, appreciate their effect and provide an effective response to them when asked
• Systematically ask questions to sell your ideas, products and services more efficiently

Questioning skills is primarily a verbal skill. As such, exposure to numerous examples is the best way to learn and quickly understand what works and what doesn’t. As a result, this course is fundamentally designed around these examples and associated exercises that would help delegates to try it out themselves.

In addition, customisable exercises can help you to tailor the course based on the strengths and weaknesses of your delegates. As you go through the course you would become more familiar with your delegates’ needs which allow you to use different variations of these exercises at the end of course to address these needs. The emphasis, as with other courses from Skills Converged, is to use Accelerated Learning principles and maximise skill transfer in a given time.