How to Leverage Inquiry to Influence
At one of Kara’s coaching sessions recently, David was trying to figure out how he could be influential and move people, without being directive. He knew he wouldn’t be truly leading if he just told them what to do. He valued their trust and perspective, but did want a way to be consultative that didn’t get stuck in brainstorming and exploration. He said, “When I’m less directive and ask questions instead of giving advice, we just circle around things and we never move forward.”
David clearly had a sense that leveraging inquiry and prompting discussions with questions was valuable because it allowed space for his colleagues to participate and inform the discussion. He was comfortable with how to do this and which questions to use to create a reflective and even generative conversation. But once the reflection and brainstorming had happened, he didn’t know how to move things along without falling back on simply giving instructions to everyone. He was a bit lost with this and asked if we had a resource of powerful questions to use when trying to be consultative. Unfortunately, at that time, our answer was no.
But lucky for you, David inspired us and below are some suggestions for questions anyone can use at several key moments within a consultative conversation, from kicking off the conversation to forwarding the action.
Identify the Problem
How would you summarize the problem?
What are the major obstacles getting in the way right now?
What is the root cause of the issue?
What should we prioritize addressing first?
Explore the Problem
Where are we today?
What should we discuss to resolve this?
What should we consider?
What will help us figure this out?
What support do we need?
What’s keeping us from moving forward?
Identify a Goal
What does success look like?
What would be a great outcome for this issue? For this conversation?
What’s important about this?
What will be different if we do this well?
Learn from the Past
What have we already tried?
What did we learn?
Where have we seen success on this type of challenge before?
What prior mistakes should we avoid repeating?
Brainstorm Solutions
What ideas do you have already?
Where can we start making progress?
What is working that we can build on?
What else?
Prioritize
How will we decide what’s next?
What feels easiest to accomplish?
What feels most critical to accomplish?
What will give us momentum?
What do we need to start on immediately because of its complexity?
Plan and Take Action
Where do we go from here?
What will I do? What will you do?
What metrics should we track?
How will we be accountable?
When will we check-in again?
Reflect on the Discussion Itself
What are our insights so far?
What are our unanswered questions?
What should we table for later?
Questions don’t have to be either leading or random. You can ask questions thoughtfully, in a way that encourages open discussion, collaboration AND you can ask questions that move people to action. What questions have you found to inspire productive conversations?