10 powerful questions / 10 questions stimulantes

Le français suit l’anglais. By/par Jennifer Hollington.



Every day or two, I dip my feet into the river that is Twitter. I don’t know anyone who can touch every post as they stream by, certainly not I. But occasionally I find a real gem, something I might not otherwise have come across.



Such was the case with @GuyKawasaki’s link to “10 powerful questions for conversations” by David Pollard of the blog How to Save the World. Pollard discusses the importance of asking powerful, open questions, particularly during research: “intelligent, appropriate, imaginative questions that provoke, that open new lines of enquiry, that challenge, that prompt thinking about an old issue in a fundamentally new way.” He describes a great question as one that is:

· inviting – drawing out the other participant(s) in the conversation, irresistably [sic] provoking a response

· engaging – exciting and accelerating and focusing the other participant(s) and re-engaging those not paying full attention

· generous – open-ended, giving the respondant(s) freedom and range to reply, and time and space to think and respond thoughtfully, not just dichotomous or multiple-choice answers

· attentive – to be powerful it has to be the right question, asked at the right time, the right way



The 10 questions strike me as being especially pertinent when planning or implementing change:



1. What stood out for you?...

2. What do you most care about?

3. What's the change been like for you?

4. What do you see your role being?

5. How are you feeling about that now?

6. What's holding you back? (asked to probe fears or procrastination, not to find fault)

7. What would you want to see come out of this?

8. How can I/we help you achieve your objective?

9. How do you know that's true? (asked not as a challenge, but as a means of exploring root causes of problems that may be stuck on dubious premises)

10. What comes next?



I recently conducted a series of interviews on CFS’s Innovation Management Process. As someone who has done lots of interviews, I’m comfortable approaching such conversations with a fairly loose interview guide and following the discussion where it goes naturally. But I wish I had had this list at the time. I would have used 2, 4 and 7 for sure.



Do you have any questions you like to use to stimulate conversation?