A life defined by questions

What would you like to do?

Where would you like to go?

What makes you light up?

The questions someone can ask us, and that we can ask ourselves is endless.

Questions spark our imagination, get us thinking and hopefully acting.

Some questions however don’t help us. They can actually hurt us.

Such as weak questions like:

Why did you do that?

This question usually makes someone defensive. It often produces excuses and stories to justify an action or inaction.

What were you thinking?

This question usually implies that the person being asked wasn’t thinking. It rarely produces a satisfactory answer.

How could you?

Again, what can you say to this question? The question is accusatory in tone and no matter what the person being asked says it’s implied that whatever was done wasn’t good.

You know that these blogs are here to help you so let me share better questions to ask.

Rather than:

Why did you do that?

Ask:

What do you want from these actions or words?

Rather than:

Why did you do that?

Ask:

Help me understand your goal with this action?

Rather than:

How could you?

Ask:

What did you want to accomplish?

Or even:

Did you accomplish what you set out to do?

What lies behind a question is the intent.

When you shift your intent to helping to understand or to finding solutions, you will rarely ask questions that put another on the spot.

This takes some practice so here’s a final question for you.

Are you ready to ask better questions?

Open for your thoughts and questions!

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Blessings,
Shawna Schuh, CSP
Helping leaders evolve.
Executive Coach, Speaker, Columnist & Author
President, Women in the Pet Industry Network
503-970-5774

www.ShawnaSchuh.com

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