Comments on: It’s all in the way you ask the question…

By: craig

craig — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:48:46 +0000

very true. sports broadcasters are always asking broad deontic questions that his experience former-athlete counterpart has no trouble answering. in that context, i appreciate the form of the question because the counterpart can do whatever they want with the question. you’ll notice that alot of times they don’t even answer it but instead immediately send the conversation off somewhere else.

By: Linnea Lewis

Linnea Lewis — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:27:54 +0000

Very interesting post – I recommend a book called Leading Geeks by Paul Glen. I am not a “technology geek” but I’m married to one. This book helped me appreciate the engineering and artistry that goes on in the mind of a geek, better appreciating how to “ask the question”, because you are right – it’s all in how you ask. The subtle difference in how you ask the question will yield a vastly different answer. Thanks, Paul.

By: The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 5 | End User SharePoint

The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 5 | End User SharePoint — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:59:27 +0000

[...] engineers find biased because of the implied connotation. You can read more about this in my “it’s all how you ask the question” [...]

By: CleverWorkarounds » The one best practice to rule them all – Part 5

CleverWorkarounds » The one best practice to rule them all – Part 5 — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:45:59 +0000

[...] non engineers find biased because of the implied connotation. You can read more about this in my “it’s all how you ask the question” [...]

By: The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 4 | End User SharePoint

The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 4 | End User SharePoint — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:00:57 +0000

[...] happened – Joel eventually had to *clarify* his original post because of the fact that readers had different interpretations of the question he was answering. As a result, some missed the real message that he was trying to get [...]

By: The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 4 | End User SharePoint

The One Best Practice to Rule Them All: Part 4 | End User SharePoint — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:00:57 +0000

By: CleverWorkarounds » The one best-practice to rule them all - Part 4

CleverWorkarounds » The one best-practice to rule them all - Part 4 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:45:13 +0000

By: SharePoint Daily for October 3, 2008 - SharePoint Daily

SharePoint Daily for October 3, 2008 - SharePoint Daily — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:06:14 +0000

[...] It’s All in the Way You Ask the Question… (Clever Wrokarounds)(Nerds are going to find this post dead boring). Before I start, let me state that I am a believer in the Honey and Mumford theory of learning styles, as well as the Marston DISC assessment. I think both are closely related, and go some way to explaining many mysteries of the world like – "Why are there Metrosexuals?", "Why doesn’t everyone listen to Opeth?" and most importantly of all "What goes on in the strange world that is the engineer mind"? [...]

By: Andrew Jolly

Andrew Jolly — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:33:31 +0000

I once listened to some recordings by this guy Mitch Perry http://www.jmperry.com , who by the way looks a bit like a young Kenny Rogers . I found that his material is also based on this concept of asking questions the right way to the right people, so it involves a bit of feeling out the personality of the person you are communicating with.

One of my favourite pieces of advice was learning a simple technique in asking a question to people that continually see the negative blocks in attempting to reach a solution , the technique was to pitch your question as a ‘Which would be worse’ statement, for example:

‘Which would be worse? We don’t spend time or money to plan for SharePoint Governance and see what happens, dealing with all the unknown challenges and costs along the way? or We spend some time and money now putting in place SharePoint Governance and have method and plan to assess and react to future challenges and changes in a structured manner.

You’ll probably notice that there’s also a chance to sway the question in your favour with this approach, (this example is probably a little ambitious, but I thought I’d try to keep in context), but what it does do is define a few boundaries and is good when meetings and discussions get a little contentious.

Great post Paul, I think i’m gonna dig out my old Mitch Perry audio books again.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:52:30 +0000

You raise a really interestin point. One of my clients can derive the type of personality of a person by the blogs they write. In a way you are making inferences in company maturity by the way they ask questions and I think you can make a pretty good judgement that yeah, they have issues with deadlines.

In relation to your reworded question, it is more about being back to factual. The positive/negative/neutral tone is debatable really, but when worded as a factual how, I think it has a subtle ‘de-neutralising’ effect.