Stop Asking Premature Questions
We have all been taught to ask questions and drill down. But too many people try to do it too early in the conversation. To understand how this should work you need to understand how the brain takes it time to open up, boot up and get to the real issue.
Level 1 – Fast logic
When the person you are talking to first starts to speak on a topic, they will give you information and data straight from RAM. The pieces of data held in short-term memory. This fast logic is interesting and will give you some background to the story and some form of context, but it doesn’t provide many clues about the person, what they think or feel about the situation.
In psychology, this is sometimes referred to as noise as it can get in the way of understanding the real part of the story. Imagine you ask someone a simple question, ‘how are you?’ Quite often the response will be ‘fine, thanks’. It is an instant response, and the computer doesn’t want to fire up the processor and hard disk for this response. Even in a sales context, when you ask someone what they are looking for, they will provide you with some fast logic and tell you some top-line functionality or requirements.
Level 2 – Well-reasoned response
Once the person has shared with you the fast logic, and noticed that you are still interested and wanting more, the brain will need to fire up and add some processing power to the information, and potentially grab some more data from the memory banks. You will notice a change in the story at this point as the person either changes direction, moves to a different stance, or adds more colour to the story. Here you will get a lot more information, not only will you get a deeper context to the story
but you may also get more subtext about the person’s thinking and the meaning behind it.
Level 3 – Why the story is the story
The third level when listening is to understand why the story is the story. The person won’t say this, but you will be able to use your intuition and questions to try and establish and understand what is driving this person.
The subconscious level is where the drivers and emotions come from. It is the emotional filter that the person is using to drive the importance of this story or project that you are talking about. To have the person share more and for you to be able to see beyond the facts and data, you will need to turn off your inner voice and seek more to understand. As the person is talking, you need to be thinking about why they are telling you this, why it is important to them, where this focus is coming from.
If you are going to ask questions, Steven Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), suggests responding with a focus on how someone feels not on the facts. Replay them and wait for further information. ‘You feel that … can you tell me more?’
Read more information on this in the Salecology book. click the image to learn more about the book, or check it out on Amazon.