Questioning Skills

The Art of Questioning Questioning, if used effectively, is a very useful and powerful tool. It allows the mentee–mentor relationship to develop, assisting the mentee in exploring and understanding their experiences with the hope of formulating avenues and actions. Questioning is a crucial skill for the mentor. They are not questions to which you already know the answer. They are a style of questions that encourages people to open up avenues of their own thinking. Used effectively they help the person deepen their thinking. They can help you come to a better understanding of the person’s thoughts and feelings. Your role is to guide, support and facilitate … not to decide for them.

Questioning skills The basic types of questions are open, closed and probing. Open questions such as – how do you feel about? or, ‘Can you tell me more about? are good at encouraging the speaker to say more. Closed questions such as ‘Is that right? can be good at clarifying and checking understanding. Probing questions can help explore an issue more deeply. It’s good to ask How, What, When, Where type questions if they help the person understand the issue more clearly. Care should be taken with ‘Why’ questions as they can put people on the defensive and can carry a critical implication.

Question types Future placing questions- What will it be like in six months time? Truth-Probers – What’s actually stopping you? Dumb questions – short and simple i.e. What do you want? Re-framing questions – moves a negative to a positive and helps stop ‘all or nothing’ thinking. i.e. I’m no good at academic work. Reframing shifts from a problem to a solution focused approach – What parts of academic work can you do? What’s stopping you being good at academic work? What would good look like?

Question types Incisive questions – What if you ? What would you? What could you? Permission questions – is the person willing to explore a tricky area? The Devil’s advocate question Commitment questions – What will you do and when will you do it? Distal questions – to be left with the person in-between sessions

Asking questions is an important skill. They can be used to gather information, to clarify and to check that you have understood what the speaker has said. The good communicator will be able to use a range of questions in conversation. Open / curious questions: These encourage the speaker to say more and to think and reflect. They encourage longer answers. Open and curious questions enable clarification and can also encourage more creative thinking through opening up possibilities. Open questions often begin with: what, why, when, how, who, where… Using open and curious questions hands control of the conversation to the speaker. Closed / leading questions: These might demand simple yes or no answers and can be useful in checking facts. A closed question can be answered with either a single word or a short phrase. They give you facts, they are easy and quick to answer and they keep control of the conversation with the questioner.

Specific: after details Analytical: looking for underlying reasons – why did this happen? Probing questions: Probing questions are open questions that allow you to explore the issues in more detail.

Models and frameworks It can be helpful for the student mentor to use models to help structure the conversation. A popular one is the GROW model: G oal – what is your goal. Help the person make it SMART ( specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound) R eality – what’s happening now? What is your starting point? O ptions – what choices do you have? What are the benefits and downsides of each option? W ay forward - what will you do now? When?

The GROW Model (Whitmore 2001)

Any Questions?