This week I attended a conference organised by EBBF about consultation. Consultation, to sum it up in a few words, is the practise of taking decision as a group by reaching unity after a meaningful conversation. There is no voting, the group has to reach a common decision that is OK with everyone.

I will post more about the method and what I learned at the EBBF forum in Milan, but right now, I want to share what I learned (or rather, reinforced) through one particular contribution at the forum by Trip Barthel, who is a mediator and a “consensus coach”. 

One of his excellent sessions was called «Ask better questions». And of course, we all want to, don’t we? But how can we make sure that we truly ask better questions?

One insight that I had in Trips workshop was that we all have a preferred learning style and thus also preferred questions. The four learning styles are represented in a system called 4MAT:

Of course, there are also mixed learning styles or people who cannot be placed exactly into one of the four corners, but the point of this in terms of asking questions is that we all have preferred questions that we ask. Some are more interested in asking why something is the case, others want to know what is making something the way it is, others again need to know how something works exactly, and again others (count me in there) are more interested in the “so what” or “what if” questions, challenging the status quo and trying to find new ideas.

In order to make sure that we can look at something from as many angles as possible, it is helpful to explore all four ways of asking questions and not to stick with one’s preferred question set.

Why questions – understand the connection of something in relation to something or someone else

What questions – examining the state of something

How questions – understanding the mechanism or underlying system of something

“What if” questions – imagining something new.

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In addition to the types of question, Trip also helped us establish what a good question is all about:

While western societies put a great deal of emphasis on honesty and truth, eastern societies value harmony and kindness more. A good question or a set of good questions ideally creates a balance between honesty and kindness, because both is important to reach a good decision.

In addition, the group established that good questions to reach a decision should be

• open
• balanced
• emotionally intelligent
• future oriented
• unifying (helping the group reach a decision)
• balanced
• from all four learning styles

Another way to look at the way we could use good questions to reach a decision (alone or as a group) would be Bloom’s Taxonomy, another classification system from education.

It shows that in order to reach a certain maturity for creating something new (an idea, a solution), other levels need to be clearly defined first, or at least, in many cases other layers are impeding the creation process.

So again, before discussing about a solution even becomes possible, in many cases we need to establish some ground work, for instance defining what it is, exactly, that we are discussing, and how we define it differently, in the group.

Because if you ask 8 people to describe or draw a rose, you will have 8 different roses, and this applies to any idea or concept that we are sharing through spoken word and even through other means.