Communication’s Most Underrated Skill

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th,: 2023

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But that’s only fifty percent of the conversation, right? In this chapter, we’ll take a closer look at the important but sadly overlooked skills of listening, asking questions, and allowing the other person to shine during conversations. Becoming a better communicator is not the same as becoming a better public speaker. Knowing how to carefully present your ideas is only one half of the story—your listener is the other half, and unless they are on board, you will only ever be engaging in a monologue, not a dialogue. One of the easiest and most natural ways to connect with the other person is to just ask questions. So many poor communicators could instantly improve by doing this alone. But asking the right questions is also important. What’s more, you need to pay special attention to how you ask them and when.

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Mastering the questioning process means you gather more and better-quality information, you build stronger connections with others, you inspire trust and liking, you learn, and you may even find yourself being helpful in someone else’s learning process. In short, good questions allow you to access the best that communication can be. Have you ever been in a conversation where it felt you were being interrogated? Think back to a memory like this, or just imagine what that kind of scene would look like. Now, what are the kind of questions that an interrogator asks? Did you do it? Where were you the night of the eleventh? You knew the victim, right?

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All of the above are closed questions—meaning they have only one short possible answer. Yes or no, or some other tiny, single-word snippet of information. A closed question is like a little dart that demands only one specific kind of information from the other person. It’s closed because, in effect, it closes the whole world of potential answers down, usually just to one or two options. Consequently, it closes the conversation itself down. Once you answer a closed question, there’s very little else for you to do. If you use only closed questions in conversation, you risk coming across as an interrogator, because others will feel that you are deliberately and forcefully closing off avenues in this way. The other person will rightly feel that they are sitting there at your mercy, being probed.

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It’s not fun, and it usually peters out pretty quickly. That said, closed questions have their uses, too: •You can use them to confirm your understanding of what you’ve been told (“So you were a history major, then, right?”) •You can use them to make conclusions or summaries of what’s been discussed so far (“So we’ve all agreed to never go to McDonalds for lunch again, right?”) •You can also use them as part of frame setting, i.e., to set the tone and scope of a more formal or structured conversation (“Were you satisfied with your service at McDonald’s today?”) Imagine closed questions like periods in a sentence—you only need a few, but when used correctly, they help structure your sentences and give you a pause now and then. Use too many and everything will feel too rapid fire and staccato. In what situations can we use open-ended questions? That question itself is a good example of one! We are opening the range of possible answers, and in so doing, opening up the conversation. We are inviting the other person into the mix and allowing them to have a turn at directing the conversation’s course. Open-ended questions show curiosity and interest in the other person, without allowing assumptions and prejudices to pre-select what we already think the answers will be.

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Open-ended questions allow you to: •Develop and extend a conversation, expanding on a point or deepening your grasp of it (“So what exactly made you so interested in the medieval period in the first place?”) •Flesh out an idea or concept and find out more details about it (“What other specific budgeting issues do we want to discuss in the meeting on Friday?”) •Probe for opinions and unique perspectives (“From your point of view, what do you think went wrong with this program?”) As you can probably see, good conversational flow contains both open and closed questions. How to Use Funnel Questions Funnel questions are what they sound like: questions that guide information in increasing detail down a narrowing path. Like a funnel, the process begins wide and broad with open questions, and steadily narrows to a point with closed questions. Each question leads on from the last, but is a little more narrowed in scope, becoming progressively more closed and detailed. Using such a technique, you ease the other person into answering more direct and specific questions, while balancing this with invitations to supply additional information as they go. Because it strikes a balance between probing/interrogating and genuine conversation, this technique is most often used in occupational settings—for example, job interviews. Imagine that an interviewer attempts first to put the interviewee at ease by asking very general open-ended questions—how they are, whether they found the journey to the office okay, etc. This soothes any tension.

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Slowly and gradually, the interviewer leads, in increments, to more and more targeted questions: So how are you finding this amazing Californian sunshine? I hope the big move is going well—what’s the new neighborhood like? Great. So, if I recall correctly, your previous job was in our branch in Minnesota. Can you give me a rundown of your time there? I’m interested in hearing more about your work with fundraising around that time. Can you tell me more about the team members? Can I ask how much you were able to raise?

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You can see the funnel at work if you attempt to answer these questions—you’ll see that the answers will get progressively shorter but more specific as they go, responding with something like “Eight hundred thousand dollars” at the end. Importantly, this is an easier and gentler way to ask such questions; consider how uncomfortable it would have been to ask the final question first. The interviewee might have felt put on the spot or interrogated, whereas with some “warm-up” questions that naturally lead from one to the other, this question is not likely to feel like an imposition. Here's a summary of How To Ask Funnel Questions: 1. Begin with open-ended questions Think of these not even as questions but as invitations to share information—as the other person wishes to share it. 2. Ask for additional explanation Ask for clarification based on the answer to the above question. These are questions that help you understand the motivations, reasoning, and cause/effect relationships behind certain situations, as well the person’s perspective on it all. You’re not merely being polite and making small talk—you use the answers you’re given to inform your next questions. 3. Ask for more details according to what you’re told Narrow the funnel one step at a time.

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You might ask for examples, justifications, explanations, or more specific instances or pieces of evidence or support. Take another step closer to the specific information you’re looking for. This may require just one question or it can take many, depending on the topic. 4. Finally, reverse the funnel This final step is optional, but you can also start working the funnel in reverse again, using the very detailed answer you got to inspire another funnel that begins with broad questions again. For example, after you’re told that the fundraising team generated eight hundred thousand dollars, you can immediately sit back in your chair and say, “Okay, that’s impressive. How did you do that?" The conversation continues with you getting the information you want, but without badgering or leading the other person. Funnel questions are not only for formal or professional situations, however.

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They can be used any time you are trying to extract some information from someone, but in a way that is easy, comfortable, and personable. A psychiatrist, for example, might need to find out whether a patient had suicidal thoughts, but this is a difficult question to ask, and so it’s best to lead into it with a long series of funnel questions. The psychiatrist doesn’t rush through the conversation, and genuinely listens to answers (i.e., doesn’t give the impression that they are “hunting” down just one desired response). Gently, the psychiatrist keeps zoning in on those aspects of the patient’s answer that will most likely lead to ideas around depression and suicide. Near the end of the funnel, the psychiatrist begins to use words like “specifically” and “exactly” to continue narrowing down. But with the psychiatrist’s inviting, encouraging language and a genuine desire to listen, the patient never feels manipulated or hurried along, and the psychiatrist gets the information they want. In your own conversations, whoever you’re speaking to and whatever information you’re trying to get, keep the image of a funnel in mind. Never make sharp jumps from very general to very specific—and always lead gently from one into the other.

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How You Structure a Question Matters It goes without saying that the question you ask determines the answer you get. But when you really grasp what this means, you understand just how much of a difference question structure can make. Ask a poor question and you get a poor answer! Take a look at these different question types/forms and notice how their structure influences the kind of answer you might get: Probing questions That is, questions that get right to the core of the matter. These are typically closed questions and are more direct, targeted, and focused, often using “narrowing language” such as exactly or specifically, or else uses question words that inspire a single answer—when, where, who. “Exactly how much will it cost if we want to send the whole office the course?" “When is the latest I can get back to you on this?" “What evidence do we currently have that the diagnosis made at the time was correct?"

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(Notice in this last instance that the question is probing without necessarily being closed). Leading questions As though you are taking the other person by the hand and pulling them along with you on your train of thought—which isn’t always as bad as it sounds! There are a few ways to do this. •By making an assumption—“How much will you be willing to invest in your wellbeing today?" (Assumption: you are in fact going to invest!). “What did I do wrong here?" (Assumption: I have actually done something wrong). Note that this is one way that a frame is created—the frame is built up on “shared” assumptions.

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•By deliberately asking for agreement, compliance, or support—“It’s expensive, don’t you think?" or “I think we both want the same thing here, right?" Even if the other person doesn’t feel compelled to verbally respond, you are still leading them, and the focus is still on them coming along with you. •By making your desired answer the easiest one—Let’s say you want someone to say yes. You could say, “Shall we have a break?” and be far more likely to receive that yes than if you asked, “Shall we pause here or continue on?" The latter question is psychologically felt as offering two fifty-fifty options, whereas with the former, the easier response seems just to agree/nod/say yes. In the same vein, asking, “It’s noon—what do you want to do now?” is the question least likely to have the other person spontaneously agree to a break like you want them to. •By presenting two “options”—the key here, of course, is that you’re happy with either option!

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Technically and logically, they can say “neither,” but they may instead default to choosing one of the two you have presented. Rhetorical Questions As we all know, rhetorical questions aren’t actually questions at all, but statements that are made in such a way as to encourage and elicit agreement. For example, “Isn’t this new layout so much easier to work with?" Strictly speaking, this isn’t a question form, but rather something you are dressing up as a question in order to frame it as something you are seeking their agreement on, rather than just telling them. If you just say, “The new layout is better,” you are potentially inviting disagreement or simply stating a personal opinion, and the other person’s perspective is irrelevant. If you make it a rhetorical question, however, you are signaling that you are not simply telling someone, but acknowledging the value of them being in agreement with you—it’s halfway between arguing that you’re right and politely asking for their agreement! To conclude, here are a few Tips For Using Questions in a proactive, conscious way: •Whatever you do, don’t forget to ask questions entirely—even poorly formatted questions are better than none at all! •Want to create a feeling of rapport or develop a conversation?

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Use open-ended questions. •Want to get particular information out of a person? Use probing questions or closed questions—so long as they are at the end of a funnel! •Want to persuade someone, close a deal, or make a sale? Use leading and rhetorical questions. •In conversations of all kinds, make sure you are mixing things up—don’t have three questions of all one type right after one another, for example. How to Be a Truly Effective Listener Many people think they are good listeners. Few of them are right!

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Being an effective listener is about so much more than comprehending what you’re told, or simply behaving in a way to make it appear that you are paying attention. In an attempt to be better communicators, many of us will begin with our side of things and try to improve the way we speak; the truth is that you can drastically improve all your relationships by starting on the other side and becoming an excellent listener first. Good listening is actually a collection of different skills: It’s about hearing, understanding, interpreting, and responding, and it’s something that we do with someone as the conversation unfolds in time. A good mindset shift is to realize that listening well is primarily about the other person—you know you have truly listened if your listening has created an outcome that the other person intended and wanted. And that's a wrap on another episode of Social Skills Coaching. I hope you're feeling equipped to ask those killer questions and become a listening legend. Remember it's not about having all the answers, it's about asking the right questions and truly hearing the responses. If you enjoy today's episode, don't be a stranger, head over to bit.ly slash pkconsulting and get on Patrick King's mailing list and learn more about him, or head over to Audible or Amazon, even iTunes, and snag yourself a copy of Patrick King's Speak Effectively.

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Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep those conversations flowing. I'll be waiting for you right here on Social Skills Coaching.