Episode 959: The Power of Questions

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 959 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:06] Mario Porreca: I'm Mario Porrecca from 10 minute mindset. The podcast, I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasure is to live out your calling, having the right inspiration to set your mindset on the right path is key.

[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to. The inspired stewardship podcast with my good friend, Scott.

[00:00:33] Scott Maderer: get to know you kinds of questions, dig in deeper and get to know the person build before. Actually answer some questions that they ask, as well as just talking to them about the questions that you have a conversation as it goes back and forth and you build. Then you can get more information welcome.

[00:00:56] And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship [00:01:00] podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself. Invest in.

[00:01:16] And develop your influence so that you can impact the world

[00:01:21] in today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about the surprising power of questions I share. Why most people don't ask enough questions. And I also talk with you about the way and types of questions you need to ask. You've heard me talk about developing your team.

[00:01:40] And what are the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. [00:02:00] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from.

[00:02:04] And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. One of the things we all have to do throughout the day is ask and get information from other people.

[00:02:27] Maybe it's asking for a status update. Maybe it's a tense negotiation. Maybe it's dealing with something that happened with your child, whatever it is. We always have to get information. And yet fewer few of us are actually taught how and when, and what kinds of questions to ask few of us, even look at asking questions as a skill that we can develop.

[00:02:53] To actually make conversation more productive. And yet the truth is questioning is a [00:03:00] powerful way of unlocking value and information, and spurning learning and exchange of ideas, improvements, and other things for some people. Questioning can come really easily. They have a natural curiosity. They have some degree of emotional intelligence.

[00:03:19] Maybe they've been raised in a framework or trained or learned over time, the power of asking good questions. But I would say most people don't know the truth is that Dale Carnegie and others talk about the power of being a listed. And part of listening to other people is learning to ask good questions.

[00:03:42] In fact, there's research out there that shows that the most common complaint people make after a conversation is that the other person didn't ask enough questions. There's tons of research and feedback that shows that we really don't ask enough questions. Now for some people, [00:04:00] the reason they don't ask questions is because their ego sets.

[00:04:03] Maybe they're eager to impress other people with their own thoughts, stories, and ideas. Maybe they just don't even care about the conversation or the other person, or they're overconfident in their own knowledge and feel like they already know the right answers to the questions. So why ask? Sometimes people don't ask questions because they're afraid that maybe they'll ask the wrong question.

[00:04:24] There'll be seen as incompetent or unknowledgeable are. But I would think a lot of people just don't ask questions because they don't understand the tremendous power of asking questions. There's been research, that's taken people and said, okay, this group of people, you ask a lot of questions.

[00:04:44] This group of people, you ask as few questions as you can in the conversation. And then what's interesting is they pair up people that don't ask a lot of questions with people that don't ask a lot of questions. The conversation is rated as atrocious. And then if they pair up somebody [00:05:00] who asks a lot of questions with somebody who ask a lot of questions, again, the conversation is atrocious and goes nowhere.

[00:05:07] But when they pair a high and a low, you're more likely to get good feedback, but even then sometimes you get negative feedback because the person. Is it really asking the right kind of questions? Obviously. It's good to ask more questions. We just talked a lot about that, but it's not just asking more questions.

[00:05:30] It's also the type of questions, the tone, the, even the sequence and the framing that you set up. Matter plus the conversational goals. What kind of conversation is it? Is it one that is competitive or that has conflict inhibit in it? Or is it one that's cooperative? Because when you're asking in a competitive conversation, You actually do want to ask close ended questions more.

[00:05:55] Yes. Or no kinds of questions. And then dig in with follow-up [00:06:00] questions to the answers, try to pry out and gain as much information as possible, but in cooperative conversations where it's more friendly, you want to ask a lot of open-ended questions. You want to ask questions that aren't as sensitive at the beginning and build rapport and then slowly get into more deep and tough questions.

[00:06:21] As you go through it. The truth is it's also about asking what are good followup questions. How many of you have walked into the store? And you're asked the question, how are you and our immediate answer, I'm fine. How are you? Those aren't really questions that go deep in conversation. They're good for an introduction.

[00:06:42] Then you could ask questions that sometimes. Just change the topic and then the best kind of questions most of the time is follow-up questions that elicit more information. Tell me more about that. How did that make you feel? How did that [00:07:00] experience, what did you learn from it? You can ask all sorts of open-ended follow-up question.

[00:07:06] Truth is the open-ended or closed ended as an important thing, closed ended, tends to narrow the responses. These are questions that require a yes or no kind of response, or that limit the options space while open-ended are more. Tell me about that kinds of questions, where you begin to open up and brainstorm and get lots of different information from the person you're opening the conversation instead of closed.

[00:07:35] And as I said before, in general, for cooperative types of conversations, open ended questions, always Rue, the day they always win. And the truth is you also want to look at the sequence of them because if you start with a very private, personal in-depth question and you haven't actually built rapport and a relationship with the person, either previous.

[00:07:58] Or by having [00:08:00] conversation with them, you're usually not going to get a good or honest answer. Instead, that's going to close down that conversation for you and what you can do instead is make sure you're focused on first. Just get to know you kinds of questions, dig in deeper and get to know the person, build rapport, actually answer some questions that they ask, as well as just talking to them about the questions that you have a conversation as it goes back and forth and you build depth.

[00:08:33] Then you can get more information. You have to watch your tone. There's a difference between asking someone where were you and where were you? Those are two different questions, even though they're the same words because they have different tones. And as you go through and think about this, focus on the conversations you're having with people focus on not just the tone and the tenor and the questions [00:09:00] you ask, but the purpose behind those questions and begin to develop that skill of asking powerful questions.

[00:09:09] Thanks for listening.

[00:09:10] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.

[00:09:41] Or if you're in the us, you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your [00:10:00] influence and impact the world.