Ask Powerful Questions

INTRO:

Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Corporate Yogi podcast, I’m your host Julie Zuzek. This pod is YOUR dedicated time for growth, developing practical tools to use with your team and other relationships and to learning deeply about who you are and what makes you tick! Because you are a brilliant and powerful being and I want you to invest more time reflecting on WHO are being, not just WHAT you are doing. Doing is awesome, but BEING, well that is where the magic happens and what makes you truly feel fulfilled. You’re going to love this episode on the  that leaders make. So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today

1 – In the first segment we’ll introduce you to powerful questions and when to use them

2 – Then in the second segment we’ll explain the main categories to use them

3 – And in the last segment I’ll share the best powerful questions to ask in certain situations

So, get out of your head and into your heart, and let’s dive right in shall we?

SEGMENT 1  

 Do you ever wish you had a truth serum pill that would get people to tell you what they really want, reveal their truth. Well you do and it’s asking powerful questions.  They will get people to reveal their truth. You can use them when you want people to open up, be more introspective and consider aspects of themselves they’ve never done before. So what distinguishes a regular question from a powerful question? A Powerful question will get people to stop and think. It disrupts them from unconscious thinking and patterns and makes them think deeply about their answers. Powerful questions have these 3 qualities or aspects: 1 – they’re short. The shorter the better in fact. We sometimes have the bad habit of wanted to use these  questions to make ourselves sound really intelligent, so they end up getting long and complicated. 2 They should be simple, dare I say, bordering on dumbed down, only one dimensional. 3 they should be neutral and not leading and not specific to our target.

How do we ask them in a way that we have success with them?

Be confident when asking, sometimes they don’t have an answer right away, and that’s ok. Allow for silence and space after you ask so your employee can reflect.

Don’t have an agenda and predetermined answer you’re hoping to hear. Don’t be leading or make it about you. Use them in “real-time during the conversation and ask them one at a time. This is an advanced use case if you’re real-time solution finding.

SEGMENT 2

 Why do powerful questions work so well? There’s a few reasons. They give the power to the other person, let them be the expert for a turn. They also force them to get in their head and think and reflect. And because they’re so simple, it gives them a chance to be in the drivers seat for a change. There are two main reasons to use them, First in a premeditated state and second is in the moment. Let’s start with the premeditated situation. This is a situation that you know is going to happen and creating a powerful question helps to prepare you. It’s like. It’s like a situational blueprint – like a job interview, or if their unfulfilled at work, or want to have a conversation about their career planning or finding their life purpose. What makes this scenario unique is you usually have a SET series of questions that you ask all the time. So for a career planning discussion you would ask them where they want to be, what is important to them, what makes them feel fulfilled? For a job interview you might ask the same series of boring questions – what are you good at? Where have you failed? What are you proud of. The other situation with powerful questions is where the situation is a surprise and you just wing it. An example would be conflict at work, or disengagement, or your employee has a death in the family. These scenarios can feel hard bc