TRAINING YOUR AUDIENCE IN ASKING QUESTIONS

In early May this year, and on Day One in Moscow with 75-plus in the audience, six of the questions that were asked were irrelevant, pointless, and needless. They were not good questions. Now while we encourage people to ask questions, and we say, “There are no dumb questions,” we do that to get people asking about the subject and exploring it when they are new to it and uninformed. Conversely, when someone is asking a question to show off, to show how smart he is, to make a point, or to lecture about something, etc., those kinds of questions need to be shut down. They do not serve the training or the participants.

Now the subject was Collaborative Leadership. Questions therefore about that, about leadership, about collaborating, about teams, etc. are all great questions. That’s because they are focused-on- the-subject questions. Questions not focused on the subject are therefore mostly irrelevant.

“How will Graves’ hierarchy values fit into this? Will you be getting into that? Doesn’t Graves provide a model for groups working together?”