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 can encourage your discussion partner to give bullet-point answers by crafting higher impact bullet-point questions.

HEIGHTEN YOUR IMPACT WITH BULLET-POINT QUESTIONS

Perhaps you remember how in the Precision Q+A workshop, we practiced answering list questions, such as: “What are the reasons?” or “What are the risks?” We might do well to think of these as “bullet-point questions,” because they require bullet-point answers (see Vervago’s Skill Sharpener on this topic to refresh your memory). The highest degree of accuracy in response to a bullet-point question often requires giving a structured list of bullet points, and if the list can be ranked, so much the better.

Answering bullet-point questions with bullet-point answers is hard work. It requires mentally sorting information and structuring a set of points according to meaningful distinctions. In everyday conversation, we may not put this much effort into answering questions. When the answerer is working hard, it becomes important for us as questioners to recognize the difficulty of giving bullet-point answers. We can articulate bullet-point questions in a way that guides our discussion partner into formulating a crisp response. Use these three steps to craft better bullet-point questions:

Step 1: Ask for bullet points when you want them
Crafting good bullet-point questions involves attention to articulation. As you phrase your question, watch your expectations. When you expect multiple points in response to your question, show this in the way you phrase your question. For example, you might normally ask: “What is driving sales?” You can heighten your impact by asking for the bullet points you see buried in the question. Notice the difference when you articulate the question this way: “What are the primary drivers of sales?” Now it’s clear you expect more than one. If you think there may be an important detail that hasn’t been mentioned, you may draw out the list by asking: “Any other primary drivers?”

Step 2: Ask for a structure or distinction within the bullet points
Once you have started discussing a line of thinking that involves bullet points, you can heighten your impact further by drawing out a structure that organizes the points. To continue the example above, you might want to ask about primary vs. secondary forces, making your thread of questions sound like this:

1. “What are the primary drivers of sales?”
2. “Any other primary drivers?”
3. “Are there any secondary drivers it is important to consider?”

When you follow up with a structure or distinction among the bullet points on the list, your thread of questions helps your discussion partner structure bullet-point answers even more precisely.

Step 3: Ask for a ranking of the bullet points
You can heighten your impact even more by using follow-up questions that emphasize rank. You can ask your discussion partner to rank the bullet points according to importance, size, risk, value, time, or any other parameter that you judge to be crucial to the work. Building on our example, this third step might sound like this:

1. “What are the primary drivers of sales?”
2. “Any other primary drivers?”
3. “Are there any secondary drivers that it is important to consider?”
4. “Could you rank the primary drivers by level of importance to sales?”
5. “Now could you rank the secondary drivers by level of importance?”

HEIGHTEN YOUR IMPACT, SOFTEN YOUR STYLE

Helping someone communicate their thinking in terms of bullet-point answers usually requires asking a series of questions. Use the three steps above to move from: 1) a single bullet point or an unstructured list to 2) a structured list or set of distinctions, and then to 3) a ranked list. Thinking about a series of questions, rather than a single question, will help you be more effective in your work.

Asking follow-up questions is absolutely necessary but not always commonplace. So how do you ask a series of questions without making waves or sounding like a micro-manager? You can adjust your pace to match your conversation partner and make the conversation more comfortable. You can also deliberately soften your tone (click here for a refresher). Beyond those changes to the discussion itself, here are a couple of ways to keep a bullet-point question and answer session flowing smoothly.

Enable Advance preparation
Remember, answering in bullet points is hard work. One way to heighten your impact without making people uncomfortable is to let people know in advance of a discussion or meeting, the questions you are going to ask. As you write a meeting invitation, you can even indicate where you expect a ranked list. Enabling others to prepare softens the impact of bullet-point questions and allows the discussion to deepen quickly.

Explain why you are asking
Indicating why you need a ranked list makes it more likely that your conversation partner will respond in a helpful way. This can be a simple preamble to your question, such as: “I’m putting together a cause map of all the drivers of our sales, and I need your input to be sure it is complete. What are the primary drivers of sales?” As with any preamble, keep it brief.

Remember Rashid from purchasing who jumped into a lower level of detail instead of giving a structured answer when you asked: “Any new risks to the schedule?” Before you become impatient, stop and consider how you phrased your question! Can you articulate bullet-point questions in ways that are more precise and helpful?

THIS MONTH’S PRACTICE

EXERCISE 1
Look for situations in your work that require asking bullet-point questions. Next time one of these situations is approaching, write down a series of questions that follows the three steps above. Review your list of questions, and their articulation and phrasing, just before you start the meeting or discussion. As you talk, pay special attention to bullet-point questions and phrase them carefully. After the meeting or discussion, jot down the questions you actually asked and compare them to the questions you had planned to ask. Where were you successful in asking high impact bullet-point questions? Where did you stumble? How will you ask them differently in the next meeting or discussion?

EXERCISE 2
Email is an excellent environment for practicing how to articulate bullet-point questions. As you respond to email, watch for situations where you need to gather information with high efficiency and high accuracy. Use the three steps above to craft a series of questions in your email. Make sure the questions help the recipient of your email see:

1. the necessity of multiple bullet points
2. a structure or distinction among the bullet points
3. the necessity for a ranking of certain dimensions

Ask for exactly the: 1) bullet points, 2) structure, and 3) ranking you need. Measure your success by asking yourself: Did I get a higher quality response than I would have if I hadn’t crafted a series of bullet-point questions in the email?

We’re here to help. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for future topics, email us at info@vervago.com.