Traditionally people believe that it's in the answering of questions that progress is made. In fact, creating questions is as important as answering them, if not more so, because framing good questions focuses your attention on the right issues.
Business Coaches know that formulating and raising questions is a mind-opening habit that forces you to have a deeper engagement with the world and a different inner experience. Asking yourself challenging questions can help you reveal hidden assumptions, avoid bias, expose vagueness, identify errors, and consider alternatives. Generating questions can help direct your next steps toward deeper understanding and creative problem solving.
Even when you know the answer, asking, "What if....? is a great way to see more and delve deeper. If you don't know the answer, don't be surprised if your coach asks you, "If you knew the answer, what would that be?"
"What if...?" questions invite you to see the world differently because those questions force you to challenge the status quo and to explore the limits of your understanding.
The habit of framing questions helps you see what's missing and therefore, to see what needs creating.
In "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" by authors Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird, thinking makes a difference in leadership and everything else.
The root of success in everything is thinking - whether it's thinking disguised as intuition or, as good values or, as decision making or problem solving or creativity, it's all thinking.
The surprising fact is that just a few learnable strategies of thinking can make you more effective.
Source: "The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird
