Prepared questions are useful. And so is the ability to let better questions emerge.
Paul was invited to lead a discussion on a current interest in Solution Focus thinking: the difference between bringing good questions into a session and allowing fresh questions to emerge from the conversation.
As coaches, facilitators and organisational consultants, we often prepare frameworks and question sequences.
We may begin each time with, ‘What brings you here?’ or ‘What are your best hopes?’ or the preferred opening gambit of whatever model we subscribe to.
Then we proceed to questions, if we are solutions-focused practitioners, such as:
- Where are you on a scale?
- What would better look like?
- What would you be noticing?
These questions have earned their place, each with a clear intent to point the conversation in a potentially useful direction.
Often they are sequenced. We have a route, with a beginning, a middle and an end. In Solution Focus work, we hope the conversation helps produce a more useful story than the one the client arrived with.
And we are not naive: we know questions also derive their meaning from their context. Sometimes the context is simple: this is a coaching session, or a review meeting or a consultancy conversation. In those settings, our prepared questions reliably do most of the good work.
Alongside that, as soon as the client answers, the conversation has changed. It is supposed to: the question was designed to prompt something new.
This means that now we are improvising, venturing into new territory. This is less alarming than it sounds. We all improvise in our daily conversations. The issue is our skill in responding to what has just been offered. The client may have given us:
- a phrase
- a metaphor
- a resource
- a sign of progress
- a small distinction
- a clue about what matters
- a hint of what they want
At that point, the useful next question may not be the next one on our list. Instead, we may need to create it from what has just been said, in the context of what has already been said.
We’re curious about how exactly we go about generating the next useful question.
How do we notice what is significant in an answer? How do we decide whether – and how – to follow it? How do we include our prepared models and questions without letting them take over?
In our next post, we’ll write about assumptions that might guide us and offer musings on what some of us think we are doing when we ask these questions.
Meanwhile, what have you noticed? When has something a client said changed what you asked next? What alerted you?
And how did you construct the next question?
If you’re supporting others through change, development or uncertainty, take a look at our coaching, leadership and facilitation programmes. They are designed to help people have more useful conversations; respond skilfully to what emerges and build on what’s already working. Explore our resources or get in touch to find out more.