Asking A Question?

    We were doing a presentation at the International Association of Counsellors and Therapists, IACT, Daytona, Florida, May, 2013. Our topic was:

About Asking Questions?

 

    When Part I was completed, it was time do the demonstration. For this we needed a volunteer with a problem. One of the class offered his problem:

I can never finish my morning appointments on time!

 

    We were just about to do the demonstration, when we decided to offer the entire class their chance to see how they would do. At the core of our presentation is the axiom:

Unless you can get an answer that elucidates the nature of the problem,

you cannot solve the problem.

 

    So we went down the line. The first person was a lady in the front row. She asked:

How do you feel about

not being able to finish your morning appointments on time?

 

    The man was utterly frank and told her that he just felt rotten for failing to complete all his morning appointments on time. Once he completed his answer, I intervened:

You asked your question and this is the answer you got.

Please mark it.

   

    The second person on the first row was a lady and she said, "I have the same question." "Put it to him then," I said. She got the same answer and I asked her to mark it.

    The third on the row was a man and he asked:

If I gave your $1,000.00 are you telling me

you would not be able to finish your morning appointment on time?

 

    He gave it a moment's thought and then he replied, "I am going to give it my darndest best shot!" To the questioner I then asked him to mark his answer.

    When everyone had their first round, i then asked the class:

From the answers you got,

is there any one of you who can now solve his problem?

 

    No one could.

    We were to go on, so that everyone had 5 questions and their 5 answers. 

    No one had any answer that could solve their problem.

 

    Now I am sure you remember the Bandlerian Rule of 5 we shared with:

    If you fail X once it is an event..

    If you fail X twice it is a coincidence.

    If you fail X thrice it is the work of the Devil.

    If you fail X four times it is the work of God.

    If you fail X five times, it is you.

 

    We were shocked to discover that none of them asked a question that elucidated the volunteer's problem.

    So, now it was our turn.

    This was our question:

Who schedules your morning appointments?

 

    He replied, "My secretary."

    Now there are secretaries who boss their bosses. So, we had to ask this 2nd question:

Can you tell your secretary that there will be a new a new opus operandum

as to how to schedule your morning appointments?

 

    There was distinct pause and then he said, "I think I can."

    I replied, "You think?" There was now a longer pause. Then he blurted out:

"All right, I will do it!"

 

    This raised a problem for us. To solve it we had to apply the Rule of 5 to find if it was possibly true that people-in-general, with exceptions, just do not know how to ask good questions. Over a two month period we had a chance to check with 7 consecutive groups of people. And to our amazement we found that they could not ask good questions to elucidate the nature of problems.

    The consequences of this are humungous. Just one example, if you are in Court and your lawyer asks the wrong question, with your answer that will be in accord with his question, you could lose your case.

 

    It is for this that we decided, for the first time ever, to put on a workshop on:

How to Ask Questions?

 

    You can imagine the scope of the problems to do this workshop as it goes to the core of human linguistics and human semantics plus the concomitant issues of human intentions and emotions et alia.

    The notice for it is posted in our website.