By: Michael DeVenney
“To be able to communicate effectively not only with an audience, but one on one, goes far toward determining our own success in life.” Norman Vincent Peale
If you want to understand what is truly important, ask your audience.
Communication is a learned behavior and you can make a significant difference in the quality of your interpersonal communication at any point in your life. The key to the shift is insight - understanding your audience. When you act on new insights, you achieve understanding and connection. You gain more time, more money and less stress.
Asking the right questions is the foundation of communicating with the people around you. Questions matter whether it is presentations, meetings, proposals, letters or delegations. Regardless of managing up, down or around you, you need to ask questions up front.
With questions, you clarify what is important, focus on the end result, and follow through on where you want to go to benefit your audience.
“If you stop for lunch – you are lunch” California License Plate
Questions take time. There is so much pressure on time and volume – we have more and more to do in less and less time. Rather than taking time to ask questions, we need to get going and jump in and get it done. We don’t have time to listen to people talk about their issues – we need to run. We already know what is important, what people really need and what is best for the situation – asking questions is just a waste of time.
This is the rhetoric we hear in business – move faster. The problem is that by moving faster we generate less than our potential. Rather than focusing on future opportunity and direction, we spend most of our time looking at correcting past problems. A study presented in the Harvard Business Review highlighted that fifteen minutes of focused questions would save about four hours of wasted time and energy (leveraged by the number of people in the room).
In sales, many people follow the adage of “show up and throw up”. If we provide as much information as possible, the prospect will be overwhelmed by how much we know and do business with us. This doesn’t happen – research shows that in more than 70% of cases prospects don’t become clients because salespeople don’t connect with them and ask about them.
Why don’t we ask more questions?
“Asking questions makes you look weak” Urban Myth
False – asking questions makes you look engaged, interested and intelligent.
When your boss delegates a project quickly to you (you know the type – the toss on your desk, take care of that for me, and keep running) rather than asking questions you hope you can figure it out and just see what you can pull off. In sales presentations, you know what is best for the client and design your proposal based on the key points you want to make to them. As you present your idea to your colleagues, you have 60 slides that provide the full background of your thinking and drive home your point. As a delegator, you wonder why your people just don’t get what you need.
Each of these examples is the result of a lack of connected communication. It happens in sales meetings, office interactions and board rooms. Regardless of your position in the organization, it happens.
You think you know what other people want and rather than clarifying if you have it right, you take action anyway and then check back later and correct direction as you go along. You make assumptions about what someone wants and this is where it all goes wrong – we don’t know what someone wants unless we ask them.
Problem-solving, goal-setting, delegations, presentations and any form of communications can be truly effective if you start with questions.
You start by asking your audience what’s important – what is the desired outcome or final result – where is this going? You ask questions, find out from the source, and listen to the answers.
Your audience can save you time, energy and money.
In any communication situation, you should have a framework of questions to ask to understand how you can connect and succeed. For general situations, you frame questions based on what is the most important result, what are the challenges in getting there, what are the opportunities to create the best results, what capabilities are needed to achieve the results, and what are the benefits in succeeding for the person? For specific situations, you can ask about what the end result looks like, what are the most important priorities, and what are the key benefits?
What is most important is asking the questions. If you are the communicator, ask questions first, listen to the answers (yes, you actually need to hear it), and then take action. As the receiver, if the questions are not being asked, give the answers anyway so people get it.
If someone delegated quickly to me without giving me the needed details and I don’t ask the questions, I waste time guessing what is wanted, assuming what is needed, and hoping I take the right direction. I make assumptions about what is wanted. I don’t want to look stupid, so I go and hope for the best. When I come back with less than stellar results I am not seen as capable. On the other hand, if I had taken time right up front and asked the key questions I would find out exactly what was needed. I would look bright and capable and I would deliver exactly what was desired (or more).
If I was meeting an important prospect and providing a presentation on my product or service, I could go in to the meeting and lay out what I knew would help them and stress the benefit to them. I assumed what they needed. I would hope they got the message. Most times they don’t and I wonder what I missed. If I had taken time and asked the prospect questions about what was most important and found out about their situation, they would have told me exactly what my presentation should be. I follow their lead and deliver exactly what they wanted and I close the deal.
You see the pattern. Your audience knows the answer. Ask them. When asked to write an article, rather than thinking about what direction you want to take and the point you want to take, step back and ask your audience what is important to them and write your communication from there. It will connect.
There is an interesting paradigm in sales – if we have a meeting for 30 minutes and you talk for 30 minutes about what you know, I think you’re dull … if you ask me questions about what I think for 30 minutes, I think you’re brilliant and entertaining. Who will I bring back?
List the people who have the greatest influence on your success. Set up a quick call or meeting to ask them the five key questions and raise your connection with them.
Questions show interest and intelligence. Not asking questions makes me think you are bored and disengaged. Even if you think you have the answer already, ask the questions first. All comes to those who ask.
Communication is a learned behavior. You can change and improve your communication at any point in your career. Asking questions is the key to understanding and connecting with your audience.
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