Ask, Not Tell

‘Ask, Not Tell’ – I wrote before in this blog such advocate is essential in presentation, training, facilitation and coaching.   I was in a negotiation class yesterday.   It highlights that by research skilled negotiators tend to ask 3 times more questions than average negotiators!   In negotiation, questioning can:

•    Expose problem
•    Reveal strategic information
•    Control the discussion
•    Be an alternative to disagreement
•    Buy thinking time

Asking good questions helps in a lot of aspects in life!!

I had an opportunity recently learning together with a number of trainers on selling / negotiation stills.   The event was led by a very experienced Master Trainer.   I learnt something new from him, which can be applicable to other training topics as well.

His intention was to highlight which stage in a sales call is more important.   He did not just tell us.   Instead, he first asked us to pick from the slide (showing the 4 stages) which one we believe to be most important.   Most chose B.   Then, he said, ‘Recall your sales call in the past few months.  In which stage you spent most of your time on?’    Most chose D.   Instantly, he highlighted a sharp contrast (or even self-contradiction) which drew a great deal of attention from the learners.  You can imagine that we then had heated discussion, and most importantly sticky learning on selling.

This technique can be applied to a lot of other topics e.g.

“How many glass of water we should drink everyday
VS
How many glass we really drank yesterday?”

Or

“Who in your team generated the most revenue last year?”
VS
“Whom in your team did you spend most of your management time on?”

There are often things which we know we should do but we do not put them into practice.   We can easily use this technique to bring out these ‘self-contradiction’.   It is like keeping them hiding in the training room, and then asking all learners to face them (or in fact ‘themselves’).

I mentioned an offsite meeting in HK.    I learnt something more about empathy.

The meeting room we used was spacious with a lot of natural light coming from the balcony.    But simply because it was so spacious, some slides were not legible to the participants at the back of the room.   Whilst I was showing the slides, I started to realise this issue.   And my first reaction to show my empathy by saying ‘…let me show you the activity instruction in writing….  I understand that the slide is not clear to those at the back…  let me read it out for you….’

It was alright until ……. I said the above a few times during the day.    It became annoying when I reminded them the problem without doing anything about it (at least from the participants’ perspective)   In fact, I only realised this after the event when someone gave me feedback.

I always think that showing empathy is always good.   But it seems that sometimes it is not….  when you cannot do about the underlying issue.