Why to ask questions

Especially when you think you know the answer

Do you know that feeling? You are in a meeting and know for a fact where you need to go, but whatever you say, draw or do, you can’t seem to get through to the other(s)?

There’s a martial arts form called Aikido that inspired me a while ago to change the way I handle these situations, and it has proven itself to be of great value.

Aikido is the art of neutralising an attack, not an opponent

Momentum

Whenever emotions are running high and pressure builds within a person or a group, the force on a direction increases. It’s like the bull engaging at the red piece of cloth. You can start measuring forces and fight with it, but the odds are against you.

You might even “win” this battle, but eventually you’ll lose because you’ve broken down the momentum. Clashing heads is rarely productive and consumes enormous amounts of energy of both parties. Everyone is exhausted and the next fight will be building before you had time to recover.

But what if you could take all of that momentum and move it in the direction you would like it to go, giving it a push in the right direction as it swings by?

Temporary Deafness

When you are convinced of you being right — this goes for your opponent, as well as yourself — , you become deaf. You “know” that the other person needs to absorb the information you provide, and surely they will see the world differently, right? If only they could listen!

I call this temporary deafness. You hear someone speak, but your brain doesn’t allocate resources to truly understand what it means. You are simply not open for new input.

That’s okay though. It’s really hard to be passionate and emotionally engaged while remaining susceptible to the chance a different idea might be better. So we just need to understand this mechanism and find a sensible way to deal with it, without diminishing the passion.

Sending and receiving

The sender is focussed on the other party receiving the information and acting upon it. And not at all focussed on the other party sending new information. So what can you do to break this lock and take all this emotional and passionate energy to help you, as well as the sender to see the same reality?

Apply something we do as programmers as well! Use the “piggyback” technique. In programming, this usually means utilising standard network requests that the sender makes (e.g. a health check) to be able to convey a message back (e.g. I’m okay for now but take me out of the pool because I’ll shutdown soon). In example for our case, to utilising the sender’s hunger for recognition, to alter the course of the conversation. How?

By asking a question!

Asking questions

When you ask a question, it should be relevant to the subject the other party is talking about. What helps is when you paraphrase the gist of the message the other tried to convey. This reduces the need for them to recite over and over what their point of view is. You confirm you’ve listened actively and you would like to inquire more information about the proposal on the table.

This is where Aikido comes in to play, or piggyback if you’d like.

The room you have to ask a question allows you to pivot the conversation to where you want it. You use the attention the sender has for your inquiry to inject a thought that leads to where you need to be. Either for you to make a point or learn something.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy

Nah not really. Asking the right question well, takes a lot of training. But I promise that it will benefit you the moment you start training the skill.

A good question is

• relevant for the sender
• relevant for the subject
• doesn’t contain a hidden message (stick to a question, not an opinion ending with a question mark)
• addresses what you don’t know, or what the other didn’t address
• is a genuine question
• phrased in the wording used thus far, or applicable to the audience

Conclusion

Doing so, can lead to two things:

1. You get new insights
2. Someone else gets new insights

In any case, you cultivate a safe environment and maintain momentum to get to the correct spot.

Sometimes, when you ask the right question, the sender or the group might ask you what you think about it. That’s the moment you can politely become the sender for a brief while and share your point of view. But whatever you do, prevent the momentum to drop. Everything that has been said led you to this moment, don’t go on a complete tangent to talk about your own agenda. This is not about you, this is about the process to go in to the right direction.

When you get new insights you ask more questions, and your active listening pays off. You might alter your initial ideas, and be sure to mention where the origin of your new ideas came from.