Get everything you want by asking the right questions

I still remember about this workshop with the team from a few years ago as if it was yesterday, because of the impact it had on my life.

It was a hot summer and all the people from the team were there. I remember we were together to discuss about how to be more successful and how to improve the synergy between us.

Each of us had to do some presentation and speech about his own achievements and goals for the next half of the year. That was great because it was an opportunity to learn from all the very best of the team.

International business is not easy because there are a lot of countries to cover, a lot of languages and obstacles to overcome. Because of that, each country was attributed to one person and this person had the responsibility to develop the business in this country. That’s a huge responsibility and that’s what made us desire to achieve more and reach higher performance.

It was good and we had a great time. I remember we even played football together outside the workshop facilities. It was in the mountains so the scenery was really nice. That was really all we needed after the hot weather and the  passionate presentations.

I was so happy to be able to be closer with my colleagues…It just felt as we were one team, one family, oriented towards the same goal.

But the reason I truly liked this workshop was how we actually finished the workshop.

Mr Choi, our leader asked us to fill a short survey with a few simple questions.

The only question I remember was the last one:

“If you were able to meet and ask one unique question to a guru, what question would you ask?”

At that time, I was so interested to improve my marketing skills to be able to make a big impact on the world that my question was something like that:

“How do you succeeded to become strong in online marketing?”

Unfortunately, I never saw the answer to this question because I didn’t really met any guru, but that unique and singular question lead me to think and think again about the answer.

It gave me the motivation to search the answer by myself.

That’s when I realized the power of asking the right questions

After few years thinking it over and over again I realized 2 things:

• No one is a guru in everything.

Even if you meet a guru, you have to ask him the right question related to his area of expertise. How can you expect him to answer about something else?

Your question has to be formulated for the right person, the right audience.

No one knows all the truth but every one may have some part of it. If you can ask the same questions to a lot of people with different experience, you will get different answers.

You must first find the people that you can entrust to have a superior answer. For that, look at their achievements, not their words. Everyone can brag to be an expert. Real experts are famous and recognized because of their skills. They wrote books and they have thousands, maybe millions of followers.

Sometimes, you may not have the freedom to ask them in person the questions, but you always have to freedom to read what they wrote in detail and study each of their strategies.

If you want to be a master, you have first to learnt to be a follower. Because every master was the follower of someone else before him.

If this guru was able to find an answer to your question, SO DO YOU.

• A superior question get a superior answer.

More the question is precise and more you get a precise answer.

Here’s what Tony Robbins wrote in his books “Money Master the Game”:

Bill Gates didn’t ask, “How do I build the best software in the world?” He asked, “How can I create the intelligence [the operating system] that will control all computers?” This distinction is one core reason why Microsoft became not just a successful software company but also the dominant force in computing— still controlling nearly 90% of the world’s personal computer market! However, Gates was slow to master the web because his focus was on what was inside the computer, but the “Google Boys,” Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asked, “How do we organize the entire world’s information and make it accessible and useful?” As a result, they focused on an even more powerful force in technology, life, and business. A higher- level question gave them a higher- level answer and the rewards that come with it. To get results, you can’t just ask the question once, you have to become obsessed with finding its greatest answer(s).

If your question is vague, your answer can be anything. If it can be anything, it means that it’s not helpful…in fact, it can even make the problem worse for you.

Some people ask themselves constantly some questions that have a negative effect on themselves like:

“Why am I so tired today?”

“Why I cannot do  anything?”

Those questions presuppose that you are tired and you cannot do anything. But is it true?

In fact, they even  encrypt into your subconscious that this is the state you have to be now, while you are asking yourself this dis-empowering question.

The result?

You become more tired, you become more incapable of doing things.

You recognize easily a dis-empowering question because you can only answer to it by an excuse that justify the false presumption.

Instead, ask yourself empowering questions and ask others precise and targeted questions:

“How can I improve?”

“How can I do better than what I am doing now?”

“How can it possibly be better?”

“How can I learn more and faster than anyone ever imagine possible?”

“How can I reach the goal i fixed with the minimum of risks?”

See life as a problem of optimization rather than as an inescapable escape of fate.

Asking the right questions gives you the power to strive to reach your highest potential

Of course, you must know exactly what you want to get before asking a precise question.

(And that’s probably a reason we may ask vague questions… when we don’t know exactly what we want)

Do you have the right question but you are afraid to ask?

I am asking this precise question because I know that I was once afraid to ask the questions I had. I thought that if my question was stupid, I would expose my limited knowledge and i would be criticized.

But I realized that I was missing a lot of opportunities to understand, just because I wanted to keep some pride about my knowledge.

There is no shame at all in asking a question that is well formulated.

In fact, asking the right questions show that you have the fiber to be a leader!

Don’t be afraid to come back to the child mind to ask questions. A child is never afraid to ask questions, do the same.

Consider yourself as a child when you ask a question. Imagine that you know nothing and that you have everything to learn. That’s the key to ask questions.

• Listen before judging

Don’t consider what you know before asking, consider what you know after only.

If you do that, you can integrate the answer in your own model and judge if it fits or not.

If you judge before listening, you are not listening ( you unconscious filters are blocking information).

You have something called a belief system in your mind that has the power to block the pieces of information that are treated and accepted into your brain.

If you believe “I know that” before asking a question, your brain is not actually open to receive the information that you will hear… that sounds scary but that’s true.

Everyone has the potential to teach you something, you just don’t know exactly what

Keep in your mind the possibility that “you may not know all of the truth”

Be open and you will learn new things If you don’t get an immediate answer to your question, try and ask again to someone else until you get a lot of answers.

• Be persistent

Sometimes the answer is the sum of many people experiences

Learn to collect and match the pieces like a puzzle until you get the answer and until you find the ultimate solution that will bring the results you want.

 

Now, that’s your turn to ask questions.

What was the best insight you had from this article?

Let me know, I read every comment