Using The Power of Using Questions to Assist A Friend

My previous blog discussed the value of The Power of Using Questions for a leader supervising those being led. In such a setting using questions might be done formally in a ‘coaching’ relationship or more informally, simply taking advantage of the benefit questions offer.

In this blog, we will move to another example: the Power of Using Questions informally in a relationship with a friend. Can questions be of benefit to a friend, and if so, how?

Have you ever had a friend give you a scenario they encountered and then ask, “what would you have done in this situation?” If so, how did you handle the a question?

Personally, I don’t find such questions to be greatly helpful and can potentially be loaded questions that set you up for the loss of a friend. I try not to get sucked into answering such questions. In my opinion, friends don’t ask friends such questions and friends don’t answer such questions for friends.

Why would I say this? When there have been occasions in the past when I took the bait and gave a reply to the question, invariably the response I got was an explanation of why they couldn't have done what I said in this situation. So did they really want to know what I would have done or did they just want me to affirm what they did? When I didn't affirm them, then they became defensive. If they truly wanted to know and learn from my opinion, they might have used a better question.

Even then, I’m still not sure I would give a direct reply to the question. Instead, I would respond with a question. For instance, I might ask them to give me more detail about the situation. If I led off with this question it would be to move into a questioning mode obliquely and not for the purpose of helping me determine the answer I might give.

If they had not already told me what they did in that situation, my second question might be to ask them what they did in the situation. You cannot always think more than one question in advance since you don’t know what their response will be to your questions. But in this case I am thinking of two and maybe three questions in advance because I will ask the second question regardless of what they tell me they did in that situation, and more than likely will ask the third question regardless of the answer they give to my second question.

After asking what they did in that situation, my second question would be something similar to this: “Is there a particular reason you chose to do that?” And whatever their answer is to this question, I will probably go on to ask, “What do you feel were your other options in that situation?” Again, such a dialogue is unpredictable so it is conceivable that I will not move on to use this third question. It is also conceivable that if I used the third question I would also go on to a fourth question, “In retrospect, given what you know now, would you have chosen one of the other options? And, I would likely follow that question with the question, “why?”

This whole set of questions are a likely line of questions that can be of considerable more benefit to the friend than my attempt to give an answer to his/her question. Assuming the friend truly wants to know if they did the right thing in the situation they described, this line of questions will help them evaluate whether they might have done the best thing. And it will be they who does the evaluation and not me. If they truly want my opinion, offering it after this line of questions can be much more appropriate than offering it at the outset. Once we have gone through these questions and answers I then have some clues on the best way to frame my reply.

In conclusion, I would give a caution about committing oneself too much to a line of questions that might easily be anticipated from the outset of a conversation of this nature. The caution is that by committing oneself too strongly to a line of questions they, in the process, quit listening. The flip side of The Power of Using Questions is The Power of Listening. I will save the discussion of the importance of listening for another blog, but suffice it to say, the use of questions lose their power if we do not use the power of listening.