Questioning skills fior new managers - part 1

questioning

1. Questioning Skills
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2. The Art of Questioning
•Questioning, if used effectively, is a very useful and powerful
tool. It allows the mentee–mentor relationship to develop,
assisting the mentee in exploring and understanding their
experiences with the hope of formulating avenues and
actions.
•Questioning is a crucial skill for the mentor. They are not
questions to which you already know the answer. They are a
style of questions that encourages people to open up avenues
of their own thinking. Used effectively they help the person
deepen their thinking. They can help you come to a better
understanding of the person’s thoughts and feelings.
•Your role is to guide, support and facilitate …
not to decide for them.
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3. Questioning skills
The basic types of questions are open, closed and probing.
•Open questions such as – how do you feel about? or, ‘Can
you tell me more about? are good at encouraging the speaker
to say more.
•Closed questions such as ‘Is that right? can be good at
clarifying and checking understanding.
•Probing questions can help explore an issue more deeply.
It’s good to ask How, What, When, Where type questions if
they help the person understand the issue more clearly.
Care should be taken with ‘Why’ questions as they can put
people on the defensive and can carry a critical implication.
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4. Question types
•Future placing questions- What will it be like in six months
time?
•Truth-Probers – What’s actually stopping you?
•Dumb questions – short and simple i.e. What do you want?
•Re-framing questions – moves a negative to a positive and
helps stop ‘all or nothing’ thinking. i.e. I’m no good at
academic work. Reframing shifts from a problem to a solution
focused approach – What parts of academic work can you do?
What’s stopping you being good at academic work? What
would good look like?
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5. Question types
•Incisive questions – What if you ? What would you? What
could you?
•Permission questions – is the person willing to explore a
tricky area?
•The Devil’s advocate question
•Commitment questions – What will you do and when will
you do it?
•Distal questions – to be left with the person
in-between sessions
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6. Asking questions is an important skill. They can be used to gather
information, to clarify and to check that you have understood what the
speaker has said. The good communicator will be able to use a range of
questions in conversation.
•Open / curious questions : These encourage the speaker to say more
and to think and reflect. They encourage longer answers. Open and
curious questions enable clarification and can also encourage more
creative thinking through opening up possibilities. Open questions often
begin with: what, why, when, how, who, where… Using open and curious
questions hands control of the conversation to the speaker.
•Closed / leading questions: These might demand simple yes or no
answers and can be useful in checking facts. A closed question can be
answered with either a single word or a short phrase.
They give you facts, they are easy and quick to answer
and they keep control of the conversation with the
questioner.
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7. •Specific: after details
•Analytical: looking for underlying reasons – why did this happen?
•Probing questions: Probing questions are open questions that allow
you to explore the issues in more detail.
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8. Models and frameworks
It can be helpful for the student mentor to use models to
help structure the conversation.
A popular one is the GROW model:
Goal – what is your goal. Help the person make it SMART
( specific, measurable, achievable, realistic , time
bound)
Reality – what’s happening now? What is your starting
point?
Options – what choices do you have? What are the
benefits and downsides of each option?
Way forward - what will you do now? When?
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9. The GROW Model (Whitmore 2001)

10. Any Questions?
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