The most difficult challenge you face after a workshop is integrating the lessons and skills you've just learned into your work. If you do not use Precision Questioning and Precision Answering in the week following the workshop, you will quickly lose your new questioning vocabulary and your ability to give crisp, concise answers. If you don't use PQ and PA within two weeks, it is not likely you will feel they are impacting your work or adding value to your meetings. In order to transform the way you ask and answer questions, you need some specific strategies.
Some ways to integrate PQ and PA include:
Telling your manager about the training, and what new PQ and PA skills you'll be trying to use. Your manager can then give feedback when they see the changes in your behavior.
Finding a "PQ Partner," a colleague with whom you can arrange times to use PQ or PA as you prepare for a review or a meeting, or to troubleshoot a problem.
Creating an action plan, anticipating specific situations where you can use PQ and PA.
To assist you with your new skill integration, this Skill Sharpener provides a chart to plan where you are going to use your PQ and PA skills. The chart focuses on six possible situations: your individual work, a meeting with your manager, a team meeting, a cross-group meeting, customer meetings and managerial reviews. Feel free to replace any of these situations with settings where you know strong questioning and answering can make a difference in your work.
Your plan should have two parts: choosing where in your work to use PQ or PA, and then deciding what skills you want to improve.
Some examples of places you might focus are:
Choosing questions to guide some research you have to do
Preparing for a presentation
The start or conclusion of a meeting
Examples of the skills you can try to integrate are:
Asking Go/NoGo questions at the start of a meeting
Asking Action questions at the end of a meeting
Giving precise answers at a cross-team meeting
The Action Plan included below is just a guide. Adapt it to fit your work and where you want to improve as a questioner and an answerer. Complete only the sections you need for this week, then fill out another Action Plan next week. See how long it takes for the new PQ and PA habits to feel like they're second-nature. And drop us a note at precisionquestioning@vervago.com to let us know what works and what obstacles you encounter. Your comments will help create future PQ & PA Skill Sharpeners. Good luck, and keep asking questions!
