David J. Parnell’s Professional Series on Questioning Strategy | Part 2 of 5 | Why Questions?

I think it is safe to say that the human race generally doesn’t like to be TOLD what to do.

Why can’t you just “tell” someone what to do? Well, in some cases you can… If whatever you are proposing makes blatantly logical sense to both parties and there is equal benefit to both of them, then simply telling the other person what to do does work.

The reality of the matter is that not all “scenarios” are created equal. What makes complete sense to one party on the first communication pass-through usually doesn’t make the same sense to the other party. This is where the difficulty and confusion can come into play.

We are going to talk about some of the main reasons why you can’t simply “tell” someone what to do and therefore need to use questioning scenarios. Again, when I use the term “tell” I am referring to directionally forward statements…

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Among any of the immediately available “projects” running around someone’s working memory that may conflict with your request, there are two major forces at play in a person’s subconscious that are battling against the demands you may be making of them. They are the psychological immune system and the scarcity principle. Let’s talk about each to see how they are sabotaging your efforts.

1. Psychological immune system – Have you ever seen a small-in-stature man walking around with his arms puffed out with his chest pushed up and a mean look on his face like he is ready for anything? Or maybe a morbidly obese woman shopping with a baby t-shirt on, skin tight jeans, belly hanging out and make up that “beats” the proverbial band? Well if you have, what you are bearing witness to is the side effects of the human races “Psychological Immune System”.

I have spoken about this in other blog posts so I won’t go heavily into it here. I’ll give you short synopses though: Our psychological immune system is a set of cognitive processes and filters that directs our attentional processes, information filters and thereby our actions in a way to keep us “level headed”.

There is actually a phenomenon in the psychological community knows as the “Lake Wobegon Effect”. This is named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional community where “the women are strong, the men are good-looking and the children are all above average”. This phenomenon describes the human race’s propensity to think of themselves, individually as smarter, better looking, more likely to succeed, less likely to get hurt and so on, than the next guy.

The processes by which people are able to do this are all part of the psychological immune system. People will absorb information that suits their beliefs, deflect information that does not, massage statistics, rationalize… even go as far as to make things up and completely refute irrefutable evidence in order to maintain the strong confident and attractive persona that they hold onto.

As are result of this, a HIGH premium is placed on being considered “rational”, “logical” and “consistent”. This high premium is the DRIVE that forces people to battle to the death in some case to be “right” rather than be “effective”. Any direct push on someone’s currently held notions or belief systems is in effect calling them “wrong” in holding those beliefs or notions.

This fits into our current schema in that a direct, hard statement, evaluation or demand can and usually does overtly assail the other person’s currently held beliefs and notions. The result is almost always an “equal and opposite reaction”. The force of your statement will usually be met with a force of their own. Protecting their concept of consistency and correctness is going to be TOP priority.

2. The scarcity principle – Loosely stated, the scarcity principle dictates that as an item’s availability becomes more and more limited, the value of that item become increasingly higher.

In no other vertical is this more evident than when the “item” is an individual’s personal freedom. When I say personal freedom, I am referring to their currently available options or choices regardless of subject vertical. These can be anything from the ability to simply stay put versus going outside, to being able to eat what they want to hanging out with whoever they want, etc…

Basically, when any limitation is placed on the options available to someone there are a certain set of processes that are set off internally that can cause ever increasing anxiety and stress. As that person is forced closer and closer to making a decision, these processes and the feelings resulting from them grow more and more unpleasant.

The two major factors at play are:

Loss of choice – making any decision will automatically delete any other choices, and
Lack of control – being “forced” into that decision.

The scarcity principle goes way back to our evolutionary processes and is wrapped around our own personal safety. It heavily involves our fear-system and more importantly our amygdala which controls the release of fear based hormonal cocktails into our systems. This can be incredibly powerful…

By making statements, hard definitions, evaluations and most importantly, demands that go against a person’s already identified interests; you will IMPOSE both of the major factors associated with the scarcity principle onto the communication recipient.

How can you avoid these? By asking questions of course… Isn’t that what we are talking about? The usage of questions as opposed to statements will produce comfort (at least more comfort than statements) through three major factors:

Questions do not DIRECTLY attack or refute existing notions or belief systems. Questions “elicit” their beliefs (which we will inadvertently give them) rather than “force” our own onto them. This will allow them the room to “be correct” in their decisions.
Questions allow them choices. Questions do not box someone in immediately… Have you ever heard the story about boiling a frog? If not, look it up. The net sum is that if you throw him into boiling water he is going to jump right back out. But, if you slowly heat the water he will become comfortable and used to it step by step… Questions can do the same exact thing. They do not fire of someone’s critical thinking as readily as statements.
Questions give complete and unfettered ownership of the outcome of the communication to your recipient. By allowing the illusion of ownership, and thereby control of the conversation and the outcome you will do wonder with avoiding the activation of the scarcity principle.

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By now it should be obvious that questions should be a very integral part of your communication tool box. Tomorrow we will talk about what you can do specifically with questions and then we will look to finish up the series by discussing types of questions and possible strategies for you to use them with.

To learn more about questions and other forms of effective communication, please search my site The Communication Expert or connect with me on Skype.