Your Questions: Trial Lawyer? or Screenagers’ Caring Friend?
Your questions: trial lawyer? or Screenagers’ caring friend?
Truth is, many people ask questions they already know (or think they know) the answers.
Many people ask questions when they want to prove a point.
These are ‘in the courtroom, trial lawyer, on the stand, nothing but the truth, cross examined, with a judge’ stuff, where a point is forced.
Not many like to be forced, and those aren’t caring questions—the focus of this blog.
If you really care and want to show caring, ask questions that come from caring, learning, becoming aware, and supporting.
As Stephen Covey says, it is best to understand the other first, and then get them to understand you.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Do you ask truely ask Screenagers questions from your caring heart?
Do you ask truely ask Screenagers questions from your caring heart?
Even Dale Carnegie talks about look at issues from the other person’s point of view.
If you google “coaching questions,” when you look at the hits, you will see thousands of examples of questions for coaches to practice.
As a coach we practice over and over to learn to ask questions focused on the heart.
What about you?
- Are you asking as caring?
- Are you asking with empathy?
- Are you asking from your heart?
- Are you asking to Screenagers’ hearts?
I’m 53 years old, and I’d like to think I have been a diligent life long learner and university goopie for the majority of that time. Even with learning and education being the dominate forces in my life, I know how difficult it is to keep up with all this change in the world.
I can’t imagine how difficult all the change is for Screenagers who have been only been around for Screenteen years.
Working with my coaching clients, one of the biggest breakthroughs we have early-on in coaching is when they begin to ask questions from their hearts to others’ hearts (like a skilled life coach.)
When you ask, with a helping heart, about Screenagers viewpoints or come froms, they can feel your care and you are better off.
Conversely when you ask with a closed (“I want it MY way”) heart, Screenagers feel that too.
Just like with goals I wrote about in a past blog, there are low-stakes questions and high-stakes questions.
The best I’ve seen at working with Screenagers are always asking questions (mostly low-stakes questions.)
The best don’t wait until the “right moment,” and then “blast” the high-stakes questions.
As human beings, we continually gather information as we see, hear, and feel (yes, emotions are about the heart)—we don’t wait for the Friday meeting to talk about how we are going to set goals for next week.
Having said that, having a set family meeting time to go into depth on issues is a key way to build deeper understanding.
What kind of questions are useful?
For these I give a nod to my first sales coach, Famous (I call him that) Shamus Brown,
We will group 4 types of questions for the purpose of this short blog, and the types are 1) fact, 2) problem, 3) consequences, and 4) value questions. (NOTE: tomorrow I will blog tips on effective listening.)
- Fact questions: Here you are looking for data, background, and details.
- Problem questions: This type of questions help you learn about (not judge) the problems Screenagers are experiencing.
- Consequences questions: These questions help you see the size of the problems and identify some far reaching effects associated with the problems.
- Value questions: This type of questions help you understand the value to Screenagers and how important are the problems and consequences.
As you can see these begin with low-stakes questions and move to higher-stakes, but that doesn’t mean you need to ask in this order as it’s best to flow with the conversation.
Asking these questions from the heart helps you understand fears, blind spots, sticking points or limiting beliefs, Screenagers may be harbouring.
Remember, if Screenagers feel they are being judged (or other negatives) they may just shut down, and because they are not in a court of law and being cross examined by a lawyer in front of a judge, there is little stopping them from shutting down.
The best thing to keep the questions going is trust, and trust is best earned through caring.
When I was training to teach public speaking we have the terms “audience analysis” and “adapting to the audience.”
in essence, these reflect the need for us to adapt our communication to be more familiar or comfortable for the audience.
Why is adapting our questions, timing, media, or even pace so different?
When you ask questions, they don’t always need to be face-to-face.
I’ve seen quite effective lower- and medium-stakes questions asked in chats, email, and social media (because Screenagers are quite comfortable with these media) which worked well for those situations.
Even in my courses, I continually ask lower-stakes questions, and as my Screenagers build trust in me, I ask more higher stakes questions with great results.
Asking questions well, just like presenting well (yesterday’s blog) takes practice and rehearsing to flow with the conversations, so please rehearse out loud ahead of time.
As you practice your low-stakes questions, you will build skills and confidence to handle the high stakes questions too.
Ask questions with care from the heart, you’ll build trust.
Remember, come join tomorrow to see more Improving Your Engagement with Screenagers and others inspirational ideas for Optimal Engagement in the ScreenAge.
Remember to engage tomorrow.
Following you then.
Keep it simple.
All the Best, Warren
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