This podcast episode features a key tool in the Self Development toolbox - Questions. Questions allow you to take control and give guidance on where you are going to end up. Better Questions, bigger questions generate better thinking.  That thinking leads to better results and bigger outcomes.  Choose to be the one asking the questions and choose which questions are asked.

Welcome to this episode on Questions. This is a little bit bigger, as usual, than I thought it was going to be. I'll give you a clue. When I asked Stephen for the definition of a Question, he said, It is to elicit a challenge or to inspire a response.  Immediately that helped me to move into a higher gear. We get taught at a young age, we see it in the classroom and we see it in our careers that the person who's asking the Question is controlling the conversation, is controlling the room. So don't you want to be the one asking the Questions? To the room and to yourself. So there is that element of control.

Also this idea that Questions determine the thinking, which determines the results. So if you're not getting the results you want, dont question the thinking. Go back to your original Question. And this also takes us on to the idea that the bigger Question, gets you bigger results, bigger outcomes, more powerful. The basic idea to first of all, be aware of this, and how can you do this better? How can you manage this? And how can you use this to your benefit? How can you help this knowledge of how questions can work and their impact, they can have, how can you use this and turn it to your advantage? We spend a lot of time on this. Stephen goes through lots of different examples of questions, type of questions you can ask. And the sort of impact they can have.

Questions are at the heart of so many of the different conversations we've had and so you'll see so many things that we touched on before coming back. I've genuinely had this one resonating my head ever since we did it. I hope you enjoy this one too. Any thoughts or questions, please get in contact podcast@coachpro.online. Check out the CoachPro.online website. Loads of information on there. Please take a look at that.

Full transcript on https://rhinoconsulting.nl/podcast-entries/betterquestions

Any thoughts? Any questions, any feedback? Do let us know.

Thanks for sharing, subscribing and liking - it all helps.

Below an excerpt from the transcript:

So today, as always, is a great topic: Questions. Now Questions is something we talked about pretty regularly, it came up a lot in the solution focused one, we spoke a lot about it there. And even in our tagline is we talk about the importance of questions. So this one's probably way overdue. So as always, let's get started. You always make the subject a lot more interesting than it sounds when we start. If we say to people, we're going to talk about questions, people aren't going to understand how deep and wide and important this is going to be. So let's start with the first question. What is a question? Lets start there. What is a question? What's the definition of a question, Stephen?

Stephen Gribben  04:34

Technically a question is a method to elicit challenge or inspire a response.

Warren Hammond  04:42

elicit a challenge or inspire a response. Okay. So you've already made it bigger. Just not just to get an answer. It's to elicit a challenge or inspire a response. Okay.

Stephen Gribben  04:56

It could be to get an answer, but it's a powerful method to elicit challenge or to inspire a response. So it's a method of communication. It's a strategy of influence. It's a demonstration of your value. And it can be a catalyst for greater impact and outcomes. So a question is to get an answer. But it can be used to communicate, to influence to demonstrate, and also to make things happen.

Warren Hammond  05:27

But even just using words like challenge and inspire in the definition, this is a weapon. This is a useful tool. And I don't think of questions as necessarily always being a part of my armory. But I should be.

Stephen Gribben  05:44

Questions are one of the most important things to have, to connect and to have impact, is having the questions.  You will have more influence from the questions you ask, than the answers that you give. One of the most important things about questions is that long after the answer has become redundant or irrelevant. The question is still standing. The answer may change. But really good questions stand the test of time, even though the answer to that same question in a year's time may be different.

Warren Hammond  06:20

That makes sense. So we talked about in these difficult times, for example, as a leader, what your team want to hear is that you're asking the right questions, even if the answers aren't available yet, or as you said, things will change. How people get confidence is knowing that you're asking the right questions. So as always, now I start to understand that I should be taking my questions more seriously, or how I use questions more seriously. Where do I start in building out my awareness of my questioning technique? Or is it about how many questions I ask? Or is it how I ask the questions or to whom I ask the questions? What's the first things I should be thinking about when it comes to my questioning approach?

Stephen Gribben  07:07

Well, the first thing is, once you're starting to understand the value, and the potential of having the questions, and it's one of the most common requests that I get is, can you just write down all those questions and give me them? And I have done that a couple of times, but finding your own questions is the most effective way of doing this. But there's the why you're asking this, the types of questions you're going to ask, there's the when to ask, there's the whom to ask. There's a whole number of areas and aspects of questioning that will determine how effective it is, and we're going to cover them all. So we're going to look at why questions are so important. And then we're going to look at the different types of questions to ask, we're going to look at how you're best to ask them. And then so we are fulfilling that popular request is we're going to give you some good questions at the end of this, in particular categories, that are going to help experience the value of those questions.

Warren Hammond  08:02

That's great. It's good. We're getting the list at the end as well. But I think as we go through this, it's just understanding that questions can take you into so many important places, isn't it? This is what you've explained and taught me before, is about this importance of better questions. But as you said, it isn't just the question itself is, when you're asking it, how you're asking it to whom you're asking it, because there's a lot of different things isn't it isn't just going to be, as you said, rattling off your list is understanding the importance of a questioning strategy. Okay, so what are the important things that I need to be thinking about when I'm asking questions? Where do I start? What's my starting point,

Stephen Gribben  08:43

Important to be first of all motivated to ask questions and so understanding the reasons why you ask questions, and particularly now,  why you need to be more aware and more conscious of the questions that you're asking not just to yourselves. But the questions you're then asking others. Questions are hugely, hugely powerful. And they can have a massive impact, positively or negatively. And so it's really important.  You and I are big exponents of self development, about taking ownership of your growth and fulfilling your own potential. So being more consciously aware of the quality of questions that you're asking. There's a fundamental to that, that you're asking positive questions. Otherwise, you can start asking negative questions, or questions that are neither positive or negative, and just get you to stand still. And this isn't about saying they're right or wrong. It's about being more conscious of making a choice. Am I asking the question I really need to be asking at this stage.

Warren Hammond  09:49

And this is asking yourself is pretty much what you're starting with here. And this is really powerful. So we talked a little bit about this in Affirmations, about the importance of those powerful statements to yourself to help, not drown out, but at least balance out all of the noise around you.

Stephen Gribben  10:07

Yeah, well taking ownership is really important Warren and it starts with you. You will never ask better questions of other people with any credibility than you're asking of yourself. So that personal leadership of you going first. If you're not asking great questions of yourself, you'll not know the great questions to go and ask other people. So it starts with you. And we are all the sum and substance of the question that we ask. And we've touched on this in a number of the sessions is that the quality of the question you ask, is the cause of the quality of thinking that you then have, which then we'll culminate in the quality of the result you produce. So the question is the cause the thinking is the symptom, the result is the consequence. So big questions, you'll have bigger thoughts, you'll have bigger outcomes; smaller questions, smaller thinking, smaller outcomes.

Warren Hammond  11:06

This is great. I love the idea of practicing on yourself as well. I mean, one, because then practice asking yourself bigger questions, and you'll get bigger results. But yeah, of course, you should start with you that makes total sense, doesn't it? Starting with you?

Stephen Gribben  11:22