Don’t ask why
I’ve run my previous post about asking questions a few times (link) plus one on bad questions (link) but the question of why people do things keeps coming up. I was just talking to a friend who asked me how he could find out why a relative supported a political candidate that my friend abhorred. I told him not to ask “why”. Instead, I told him to ask questions that start with “what” because they are easier to answer. I gave him an example of a question that I used in a similar situation for a previous election, where I asked the person to tell me the top three things the candidate had done previously. She gave me a list of actions I didn’t know the candidate had done!
But I also slipped myself and asked him a why question later in the conversation! Oops. So, I apologized.
My advice to not ask “why” runs counter to advice given in the marketing world, where I come from. Marketing guru Simon Sinek has made a career of advising people to ask “why”. And there’s a technique to ask people “why” seven times to really uncover their real reason. Seven times!
But as I said in my bad questions post, asking why can make people feel attacked. The seven times why is really uncomfortable, and I’ve seen people really squirm. Not only that, but in reality most of the time that we humans do things, we don’t really know why we do them. Not really. Cognitive psychology has made a study of various factors that we are consciously unaware of but can influence the choices we make every day. Or we do things because we have always done them, or because the people around us do them. We may do them out of instinct also.
You won’t get any of those reasons if you ask why. Instead, you can do as I did and ask what things the candidate has done that they really like. Other suggestions I have come up with are:
· What is it that you hope will happen if your candidate gets elected?
· What would you like them to do?
· How would they make that happen?
· Where did you hear about this?
Are there any other what questions you can think of?
Let me know if you try it and how it works.
From a reader, with permission:
1) A really excellent question is, “What is the most important to you about (that)?”
And that’s a question you can ask a couple times! “What else is important to you about (that)?”
2) “Why” questions are often grieving questions, not information-gathering questions. That’s one of the main reasons they are loaded with all the emotions of loss.
Do your grieving with someone you feel is emotionally safe.