Are you asking good questions?

byKarlOtake

817 followers

9 years ago

It was around 0400 and I was sitting next to my team leader en route to our site for morning operations. Id like to say mornings come natural to me, but that would be less than honest. To overcome my forced affinity for the early hours of 0-dark-30 I drink caffeinated beverages, loads of them...or at times just a water bottle with a scoop or two of concentrated caffeine powder.

Alright so the backstory for what i'm going to describe is about set...sleep deprived, highly caffeinated, confined to a small space traveling in a convoy with a bunch of guys.

My team leader is listening to something from "Five finger death punch" for a calm start to our day and so he doesn't have to listen to us. I'm super wired and bored out of my freaking mind so I look over at him and ask a stupid question which is a thinly veiled attempt at mindless small talk. My TL of course knows this and then attempts to ignore me. At this point I know I have to step up my game to get his attention, so I purposefully crafted a question based on something HE is interested in. Boom, I get a response! But the response was just an answer, back to the silence of square one, the silence broken only by the dust being kicked up by our tires.

At this point I remember what an old Car Sales Manager used to tell me everyday. "People buy for their own reasons, not yours." I decide to apply this to my questions. It was like magic, when I actually thought out and directed my questions, conversation flowed, and the better the questions, the better the dialogue.

I have found myself at times (especially here at Wealthy Affiliate) not wanting to ask questions so as not to sound dumb, or come off as a novice, which of course I am;). It is at this critical juncture in which I must remind myself that we are (all) here at WA for many reasons and at different points along the path to online prosperity. Some of us are getting better by learning through asking good questions and some of us (further down the path) are getting better by learning through teaching, via good questions.

My intent on sharing this is to help illustrate the UTILITY of well thought out questions. Although the reasoning for good questions varies by situation, the outcome almost always results in a deeper understanding. As motivational speakers like to say, "QUALITY QUESTIONS CREATE A QUALITY LIFE."

Sooo...DONT BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS.

All the best,

MK