What is the best question you've been asked recently?

6 Steps To Your Best Life-Changing Conversations

Step Four:

QUESTION

        If you take a quick look up to the top of this blog you will see three phrases (a fourth will be added as this site gets redesigned in coming months).  Wake up.  Be alive.  Stay curious.

        My wife and I were carefully raised in a very conservative religious environment that did not encourage questions.  We were told what to believe.  To question what we were told was almost borderline sinful.

        Fortunately, an early mentor, my sister-in-law’s grandfather, was the one who gave me permission, even as a young lad, to ask any question I had roaming around in my mind.  To this day, a phrase I remember him saying often was, “The only bad or wrong question I know about is the one you are not asking.”

        Because that man was an educator I can remember him asking questions similar to, “What is it you are needing to know from what you just asked?  What are at least two other ways you could ask that question and get all the information you want?”

        This wise old man was also the first person I can remember saying to me that, “...if you ask why often enough you may just get to where you want to go with what you want to know.”

        I did not have many conversations with this old man.  However, the ones I did have gave me permission to be curious, to ask, and ask.......and ask.  Some how this wise soul knew that just being told was not enough.  He unleashed in me the fact that to really know, to really believe for one’s own soul, to question is the door one needs to keep walking through times per day.

STOP.   LOOK.   LISTEN.   QUESTION.

        Stating what you and I both are realizing, to pause, to stop is crucial in any conversation with any person, young or old.  Our response to the pause is to open wide, not just our eyes, but our heart, our soul, by looking at and into the eyes of the person with whom we are communicating.

        Those first two steps to your best life-changing conversations then need to be supported by a willingness to listen.  Deeply.  Thoroughly.  Too often we listen only to find a break in the conversation to begin telling what we think.

        If being a teller before you are a listener is your habit, the conversations will not be near as meaningful as they could be.  You may think you are getting your idea across, but the person you are with will often not feel heard, or in many cases even valued.

        One of the current delights of my life is the deep privilege of mentoring mentors, training men and women around the globe to mentor in such a way that lives are unleashed into their honest dreams way beyond what they ever imagined.  That is possible.

        Some of the best vehicles to help any person get to where they long to be in all 8 dimensions of their life are questions.  Formed thoughtfully, even artfully, questions will get any one to where they need to go, as they become the person they were divinely designed to be.

                 Why?   When?   How?   Where?   What?

        These are the choice words that begin the finest of conversations as the best of questions get asked.

        I can be on an airplane talking to a complete stranger and questions carefully asked, with warm permission, will often have that man or woman asking when we are landing, “What did you ask me that brought me to tell you more about my life in an hour than I’ve every told anyone?”  Good questions.  Judy can back me up on this in our travels.

        Most of the time I begin by asking, after exchanging the usual traveling pleasantries, “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”  Some times I’ve been told, “No.”  Other times they’ve been honest enough to say they needed a nap.  No problem.

        If someone were to ask you, “Tell me who you are.  If someone asks you ‘Who are you?’ what would your own answer be?”  That most often leads to some very rich and intriguing conversations.  I learn that I am, indeed, interacting with a very special person.

        However, too often, that “who” question automatically gets turned into a “what” question.  It is heard as “What do you do?”

        That’s one of the “dime a dozen” ho hum questions that rarely take one anywhere of deepening value.  “What,” though it may be interesting, is vastly more interesting if you gently investigate the “who” way before the “what.”

        A good book to help you (as it has helped me hone even better the skill of asking questions) is Power Questions by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas.  This will take us to Step Five with life-giving intentionality and some dash and class thrown in for pure fun.

Question with life-giving intention.

6 Steps To Your Best Life-Changing Conversations

Step Five will be here within four days!