Foibles of Open-Ended Questions
Conventional wisdom dictates that if you want to get to know someone, you ask them open-ended questions:
- How are you?
- What do you love about your job?
- What’s your favorite XYZ? Why?
Et cetera.
Unfortunately, many of these open-ended questions lack enough context to help the person answering figure out what to say.
For example, in order to tell you how I am, I have to know how I am, I have to know whether you want a polite platitude or an honest answer, I need to know whether you’re expecting the two second, ten second, or three hour version of the “real” answer… And I have to decide how much detail I want to share with you… You get the point.
If I haven’t been reflecting on my state of being when someone asks me “how are you?” I have to do an impromptu emotional analysis of my current mental and emotional status.
And the conversation stalls.
System processing… system processing….
Meanwhile, I’m staring into space like an idiot, because… system processing…
Oh, and once system processing is complete, I then have to translate feelings and images into words. Words which may or may not want to cooperate, resulting in further system…
