Art of Quesstioning
A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information is provided with an answer. The most important word in this definition is the “information”. Human have always tendency to seek information and this curiosity to gain the information was the main cause of human evolution. Evolution was not accident, human was destined to evolve. The most powerful thing that distinguish human from another creatures is the ‘consciousness”, or the ability to evaluate or ability to analyze or more subtle we say human’s ability to ask questions. From million years millions of humane have been asking millions of questions. Questions arise when people reflect on their lives and their world. Questions are part of almost all civilizations.
What is the art of questioning?
Questions are not only asked for information exchange, questions are asked also for introspection. The main purpose of questioning is learning and application of learning for improvement. We can call it way of learning and subsequently way of improvement. Thinking provides the conceptual tools for understanding how the mind functions in its pursuit of meaning; art of questioning employs those tools in framing questions essential to the pursuit of meaning. The main question comes here that why questioning is important in learning? Compare the mind with a huge library that contains millions of book shelfs and book shelf contains books. When we ask the question, mind creates a blank book shelf in the library and then we start to fill that book shelf with books since mind doesn’t like the blank book shelf. Again consider the mind as a big library; a right question will give you right information. Art of questioning is a technique to asked series of question in a structured way for improvement. Art of questioning contains different type of questioning techniques like open and close ended questioning, probing questioning, leading questioning, and rhetorical questioning that are used in different situations.
Art of questioning in literatures
If we see the all ancient great literatures we will come across that all contains the style of questing. These all literatures start with a question and ends with an answer. The very earliest religious writings in ancient India, the Vedas, which date from around 1500 BC, in a formal sense, are hymns to the gods, but as many scholars pointed out That style is dialectic, authors asks lot of questions and gratify them with the answer. One of the greatest intellectual heritages in Indian literature is “Upanishads’. Vedas are in ambiguous style but the intellectual knowledge of Vedas reaches at its extreme in’ Upanishads’. Upanishads were also written in question-answer style.
“This world is seen by eyes but who gives the power to eyes to see?” a one of the classic questions, asked in Upanishads or a way to teach about the absolute ?
Bhagawad Gita is considered the most intellectual literature in contemporized world. The style of Gita is also question-answer based. Arjun asks the question to Krishna and Krishna replies him but one of the most significant question that was underestimated by many scholars was the question asked by Dhritrasthra to Sanjay. Gita starts with a question, when Dhritrastra asks to Sanjay “What my son and Pandav’s sons are doing in the battleground”. If somebody reads Mahabharata thoroughly then he will find that this is the only instance when Dhrirrashtra makes distinction between his sons and Pandu’s sons apart from this he always use “my sons’ expression for Pandavs, here author wanted to convey that a seed of “Moh (attachment)” had formed in the mind of Dhritrashtra and at the end Arjun says my moh has been vanished. Again, a classic way to express through questioning how author used art of questing to express the message. Gita is not exceptional almost all great literatures used art of questing to express the message weather it was the tales of Vikram-Betal or The works of al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali and other Muslim logicians, or budhist philosophy or the work of Chinese philosophers Confucius, Mozi, “Master Mo”, that was credited with founding the Mohist school, whose canons dealt with issues relating to valid and invalid. The works of Greece writer Homer, written in the eighth century BC, contain mythic stories that use gods to explain the formation of the world by questioning-answering. When we thrash out the role of philosophers to develop the art of questioning the greatest name comes in mind the Greek philosopher Socrates.
Socrates Questioning
Socratic Questioning is disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we don’t know, and to follow out logical implications of thought. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from other questioning is that Socratic questioning is systematic, disciplined, and deep, and usually focuses on foundational concepts, principles, theories, issues, or problems. Socratic Questioning is often referred to in teaching, and has gained currency in as a concept in education particularly in the past two decades.
Socratic questioning illuminates the importance of questioning in learning (indeed Socrates himself thought that questioning was the only defensible form of teaching). It illuminates the difference between systematic and fragmented thinking. It teaches us to dig beneath the surface of our ideas. It teaches us the value of developing questioning minds in cultivating deep learning.
The art of Socratic questioning is intimately connected with critical thinking because the art of questioning is important to excellence of thought. What the word “Socratic” adds to the art of questioning is systematicity, depth, and an abiding interest in assessing the truth or plausibility of things.
Art of questioning in Management
Manufacturing
A prominent author in the area of manufacturing improvement advocates the use of Socratic questioning in resolving apparent contradictory requirements of a process. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and his series of books “The Goal” give a particular focus on how to use this method to avoid compromises that satisfy neither side in a situation of apparently contradictory needs. This use of the method is a key element in his Theory of Constraints. This book focus on a plant manager who is continuously passing through the anguish of under performance of plant and the he meets to a person and then that person teaches him how to run manufacturing plant efficiently but the most interesting part of that learning was that he never teach any lesson to plant manager he just ask questions on questions and force that plant manager to identify the constraints and then to remove that constraints
Process Improvement
Various quality tools were formed on the basis of questioning, Checklist, 5W1H, Why-Why analysis are some name to few, infect why-why analysis sheets has become the part of quality culture of many world class companies. The theame behind the why-why analysis is the any problem can be solved if we can find the root cause of that problem and we can find the root cause if we ask five times “Why” to that problem. Although the 5-Why problem solving technique has been popularized by the Japanese, this common-sense concept has been around for quite some time:.
Business Strategy
Peter Drucker is considerd the most prominent management thinker of the modern management world and his most important contribution to the management is his five classic questions. The five questions posed below come from Peter Drucker, one of Management’s top scholars and a prolific writer who when he died in 2005 at the age of 95, was still writing. Drucker maintained there are five questions you must answer before constructing a mission statement; they show up often in the business literature in different order and with different terms, but essentially he’s saying that you have to know who your customer is and how your business is going to meet their needs. These five questions are-
1. What is our business?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What is of value to customer?
4. What will our business be?
5. What shouls our business be?
Sales management
The questioning technique becomes two ways when it comes to sales management while in the other areas of management the purpose for questioning is introspection while in the sales it is used for information acquisition and negotiations. At the time of pursuing MBA, I learnt 10 skills of effective salesperson from my teacher and out of them first one was “Salesperson listen more and talk less and ask many questions”. Most people trying to sell talk too much. “They’re good talkers – they must be salespeople” or “all you need to be a salesperson is the gift of the gab” are often heard misnomers. If you are talking you are not listening! If you do not listen you will never find out enough information about the prospect.
THE FUNNEL TECHNIQUE
This is a questioning technique used by salespersons to keep “on track” as they guide the prospect towards service or product offering once they have uncovered the needs.
The technique relies on you using the prospects own words back to them and you must take notes. You will need to remember what the prospect says both now and possibly well into the future so do not rely on your memory
STEPS OF THE FUNNEL TECHNIQUE
There are four steps to the technique but that does not necessarily mean that it will always be only four questions:
1. Motivate – Reason for asking the questions
2. Open neutral questions – to get non-specific, un-biased information
3. Open leading questions – to get specific, biased information
4. Summary and/or get commitment with closed questions
Questioning using the funnel technique is one of the most powerful selling tools available today. The key to its success is to practice using it.
About the Author
I am the student of MBA (Aravali Institute of Management, Jodhpur). I completed my graduation in mining engineering from MBM Engineering College, Jodhpur. From my childhood I was fond of ancient Indian scriptures. Gita was always source of inspiration for me. Initially I started to write articles on Indian spirituality and Philosophy then I moved towards management articles.%dªlchemist is one of my all time favorite book.%dªrticles for me is not only just combinations of word in a most sensible way, Articles for me are expression of life.%d%a%d%aTarun Bissa%d%a