David J. Parnell’s Professional Series on Questioning Strategy | Part 3 of 5 | What Questions Can Do.

In following post #2 in our questioning series that addressed why questions are generally superior to statements in a persuasion setting, let’s now talk about what questions can do to someone’s perspective exactly. There are 5 major functions that questions can serve during the course of a communication interaction. These functions are NOT exclusive to themselves either… A question can mix and match and employ any or most of them in a single phrase. I will provide a quick explanation and example for each.

[amprotect=2, 3]

1. QUANTUM – Questions can offer a re-directing or quantum view of things. What this means is simply that there are always many different ways to look at and evaluate a situation. A situation can be evaluated from the positive, the negative or unbiased positions. You can also change up the scope, content, context, temporal position, value hierarchy, inductive/deductive, etc… by using questions. I have these two functions combined because they are both simply a directionalization of the persons immediate thought process. Examples:

a. Re-directing – Let’s say someone crashed their car and are pining away about the difficult times ahead. In other words, they are focused on the negative aspect of this. A re-directing question may be “What could happen that would make this a blessing for you?” or “How are you going to rebound as quickly as possible from this?” This type of questioning will begin to take the person’s mental focus away from all of the negative aspects and get them to begin evaluating positive things…

b. Quantum – Let’s take the same example with the accident victim above. A quantum question may be “How good is it going to feel 4 weeks from now when you got your insurance check and are just sitting down into the leather seat of your brand new car?” This question takes their thought process out into the future AND re-directs to a positive situation (buying a new car).

2. LEADING – Questions can be used to gently lead someone down a particular path. Leading questions simply use a battery of questions whose answers will logically lead to the conclusion that would like the person to come to. An overt example of this is in the Socratic questioning method. Socrates would use this style of questioning to either help people learn or to berate and embarrass others. In working with the example above with the crashed car, imagine it is your friend and you want them to get a convertible. This way you can cruise with him to the beach…

You: Hey man… aside from food, what do you love most in this world?

Him: Women!

You: Exactly… What is one of the best things for picking them up?

Him: My arms….

You: Interesting. Ok… the next best thing?

Him: A cool car.

You: Yah… and what is one of the coolest things a car can have for the summer?

Him: A convertible top!

You: That is so right… So what are you going to do with that insurance check?

Him: Spend it… (Ok, he is a bit slow…)

You: On what?

Him: A convertible…

3. ELICITATION – Regardless of the ancillary effect questions have on a communication discourse, they are almost always used for information elicitation. This can be broken up into primary and secondary groups. The primary group is simply the first attempt at eliciting information on a new subject. In other words this is you primary line of questioning each time you begin a new subject. Secondary questions are basically confirming and probing questions that follow up and clarify the information provided for the primary questions. So you can imagine it this way… Primary are the base and secondary are on the surrounding periphery. Some examples:

a.Primary – Whose is responsible for causing this accident? (Initial subject is the initiator of the accident)

b.Secondary – Do they have insurance? Do they have a license? Were they drinking? (These probe specific qualities of the initiator)

4. HYPNOTIC – Questions can have an imaginative, and thereby hypnotic/trance inducing quality to them. What this means is that through the usage of questions you can create vivid imagery inside of someone’s mind and thereby help facilitate state changes. You can do this by asking questions that elicit structural, contextual and content oriented information. Some examples:

a.Structural – If you had a million dollars, what would you do?

b.Contextual – Where would that happen? Who would be there? When?

c.Content – What would they look like? What would they say? What sights would you see?

5. CONVEYANCE – Questions can be used for the conveyance of information. The usage of leading-style questioning can “reveal” your intended message from the other person’s mouth. They can also act as a buffer for the presentation of certain types of information. The strategic usage of questions can also display mental states or emotions. Some examples:

a.Leading style for information conveyance – Do you remember what I told my parents I wanted for my birthday? Yes. Do you think they can afford it? No. Who do you know that can? Me. Well how happy would that make me if you did that? Very…

b.As a buffer – Do you remember the thing we were dreading so much? How long do you think we can go on without it happening? Well have you seen the news today?

c.Displaying emotion – How did that make you feel? What did that mean to you? What can I do to help you? (Compassion). Rhetorical questions can be great for this as well… Who gets the “stupid” award today? (Annoyance)

Now, if you have done any searching on the internet for questioning strategies, methods, types, etc… You probably already know that there a ton of different “types” of questions. Most of the things I have found are borderline ridiculous. If you want, you can simply continue to move the level of abstraction lower and lower and begin defining question types as, for example, “The bathroom sick after partying too late question”… Going to acute in the definitions is overcomplicating things. All questions that you can think of will indeed fit into one of the 5 functional categories above. Tomorrow we will talk about some specific examples of each category and we will talk about the usage of strategic examples for everyday life.

[/amprotect]

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