Asking Good Questions to Get Better Results

In a great post, The Eblin Group refers back to an ancient method for building leadership capacity in your staff. Large organizations simply don’t have the ability to provide all the answers from the top down, they say. It’s critical to teach your employees how to think through problems on their own.

The master of this teaching method was Socrates. The Eblin Group writes, “Socratic questioning is named after the method that the Greek philosopher Socrates used to teach Plato and other students, Socratic questioning is a disciplined approach to questioning that helps people examine situations and unpack them in a way that helps them think through how to solve problems and improve processes.”

If your team can learn to use these questions methodically, they’ll be able to think through complex issues and come up with better solutions. Here’s the guide the Eblin Group provides.

1. Challenge Assumptions. Use these questions:

• What underlying assumptions led us to this conclusion?
• What’s the evidence for our assumptions?
• How would we view this if we challenged our assumptions?

You may start with “dumb” questions, and that’s okay. Dumb questions often lead to innovation. “Do doors always need to have handles?” You can start by questioning what your customers really want from you. Ask “why do we…” or “why don’t we…” questions about your services. Eventually, you’ll get to insightful questions that get people thinking more deeply about how and why you do things.

2. Probe for Clarity. Ask for a specific example of an issue. Ask the team to define something in its simplest, non-expert terms. You may find that people on the team have very different definitions of what a service or product really is. Your customers may have different ideas themselves. Until everyone is clear on what we’re talking about, you’ll have trouble moving forward.

3. Stimulate critical thinking and alternatives. Ask these questions:

• What are the root causes of these issues?
• What are the long-term implications of this decision?
• How would someone with a different perspective view this issue? (This is why you should always include non-experts and new hires in project groups. They bring a beginner’s mindset to thinking about what you do.)
• What if we approached this issue from a completely different perspective? Inversion is a useful technique here. It’s easier for most of us to see what’s wrong with something than what’s right with it. Inversion approaches a problem from the back. Instead of how we can make money on this product, ask how can we avoid losing money on this product. Instead of asking what our customers want, ask what they try to avoid at all costs. It’s an effective way to get un-stuck in your thinking.

Here’s a simple example of how even small  assumptions can hurt business. I once had a conversation with a small business owner who assumed that her customers were happy with their service because she never got any calls about late deliveries or issues during events. When I asked whether she was sure they could get through, she tried calling her own cell. Turns out the mailbox was full; no one could leave a message. She’ll never know how many calls she missed from unhappy customers or potential new ones.

“It’s not the things you don’t know that trip you up. It’s the things you think you know, but you don’t. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.” – Claudia Gray