Three steps to higher impact questions
Does the following scenario sound familiar? You step into a status meeting and ask for an update: "Any new risks to the schedule?" Rashid, your counterpart in purchasing, responds quickly: "Delay in materials! When I called the supplier this morning…." You quickly realize this issue is uppermost in Rashid's thinking, but his response doesn't represent a thoughtful list of all the new risks to the schedule. What's a precision questioner to do? Before you blame Rashid and move on, consider how you … [Read more...]
Slippery Terms: Do you and I mean the same thing?
In the field of informal logic, "slippery terms" are words that mean one thing to one person and something different to another. They produce a consensus that is often an illusion, and therefore likely to fall apart. With long-time colleagues, the depth of shared context or background is usually enough to keep our meanings aligned. But when we work with people we don't know well, and we add differences in expertise, language, and culture, slippery terms create errors, misunderstandings, and … [Read more...]
The Power of Go/NoGo Questions
When meetings go wrong, the grumbling begins. The leader didn't have an agenda. The goals of the meeting weren't clear. One person monopolized the discussion. Key participants were unprepared. There were too many useless tangents. So whose job is it to fix broken meetings? … [Read more...]
The art of the follow-up question
As a student of Precision Questioning and Answering you have probably noticed that inquiry deepens conversations, sometimes in unexpected ways. This month we had lunch with an executive from a semiconductor company, we'll call him Ted. In the middle of our Moroccan chicken salads, Ted asked a direct, and very precise, question: "What class of problems does Precision Q+A help solve?" … [Read more...]
How to soften impact without losing precision
Suppose we are meeting with a customer to understand their requirements for a solution to a complex problem we are trying to solve for them. As Precision Questioners, going into the situation we know two things: once we understand the big picture, most of our questions will need to be precise, and we will often need to ask follow-ups. In a situation like this, there's a third parameter. When a working relationship isn't firmly established, it's also important to preserve rapport and perhaps even … [Read more...]
Giving bullet-point answers in response to list questions
The challenge of Precision Answering is to think before we speak so that we can structure what we say. As a result of this structuring we communicate more effectively and our credibility is higher. Learning to give bullet-point answers is classic Precision Answering, forcing us to become more disciplined in how we think and how we communicate. … [Read more...]