Thought Grenades: The Explosive Art of Asking Questions

Asking just the right question, at just the right time, in just the right way is one of the most powerful ways to facilitate any learning experience. A fantastic question can be disruptive, revelatory, inspiring, and even re/disorienting. A great question can be a thought grenade.

In our day-to-day lives, questions are often about receiving information - we ask a question, get an answer, and move on. But in facilitation, questions are all about exploring ideas, sharing thinking, and going deeper with our learning. This means that we need to think of questions differently - they're no longer about getting answers and information but much more about exploding ideas, shaking up assumptions, and disrupting patterns of thought.

I call these thought grenades as I often find myself hurling a question into a group only to see their thinking completely blown apart and everything turned on its head.

Asking great questions can be tough though, so how do you handle questions in a way that enhances the learning experiences for your participants?

The power of why

When you get an answer don't just move on, but ask why. When you get this new response, ask why again. See how deep you can go with the thinking by asking why? Why? Why…? You may end up sounding like an insistent toddler, but there’s power in that simple question. Often the first answers are loaded with assumptions or are wrapped up to sound great but really lack substance. When we push deeper with the questions we can often drill down into the root of matters.

Remix the answer

When you get an answer reword, rephrase, or rework it and send it back to the person you go it from. Have you understood them correctly? Is there more they want to say? How does the answer sound to them when they hear it back? This process helps us, as facilitators, check we’ve understood whilst also prompting participants to really think about the answers they’re giving - often we see our thinking in a new way when it’s reflected back to us.

Sit with silence

When you ask a question be comfortable with silence. It’s every facilitator’s experience that they ask a question of a team, group, or individual and get silence back. You probably feel the urge to rush in and give an answer yourself, but hold off. It takes time to think and it’s never as long a silence as it might feel to us. Sit with the silence and you’ll almost always have a great response emerge.

Build the connections

Connect people's thinking. Often participants will offer up responses or answers and we end up playing question-answer ping pong with the discussion always shuttling between you and a participant, and you and another participant. Instead, forge connections between different answers and different participants. Does an answer relate to something someone else said? Does it challenge something, build on something, or offer some new perspective? Ask what they think about that. Bring others into the conversation and foster that dialogue.

Don’t offer answers

Asking questions as a facilitator is all about developing the learning experience. When we ask questions of others we’re often looked to provide definite answers. Of course, we rarely have such answers and even if we did, that’s not what we’re there to be doing. This will frustrate some people, and maybe even confuse them. But if you can hold off on giving answers, resist the urge to correct people, or provide information you can better guide them on their own learning journey. Instead, try to challenge their thinking, extend their ideas, and support them in their understanding. Sometimes rather than giving what is wanted, we need to give what is needed.