Brain Power: Learn to Improve Your Thinking Skills by Karl Albrecht

Author:Karl Albrecht
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Personal Growth, General, Psychology, Self-Help
ISBN: 9780671761981
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 1980-04-15T23:00:00+00:00

Although the exclusive use of divergent questions would probably turn an ordinary conversation into a confused tangle of highly abstract topics, a few carefully selected ones could help to keep the discussion moving in a direction that meets the needs of the people involved. For example, the cocktail lounge discussion mentioned previously might have gone in a different way.

“Hi there.”

“Hello.”

“How do you like the band?”

“Oh. I like them very much. They’re really good.”

“Me too. What kinds of songs do you like the best?”

“Oh, I like almost anything except acid rock. Jazz, mellow rock, folk songs—you name it. I just Jove music of any kind.”

“So do I. I’ve been learning to play the piano lately, so I enjoy watching musicians play even more than I did before.”

“Oh, you play the piano? So do I.”

“Really, what kinds of music do you play? By the way, would you like to dance?”

“Sure.”

The difference is obvious. Divergent questions—in this case, open-ended ones—invite the listener to supply information well beyond the cues contained in the question. This kind of inquiry requires an active mental process on the part of the other party and stirs him or her toward concentration and interest in the topic. After all, the primary function of small talk of this kind is to give the two people something to do, that is, to structure their interaction while they get to know each other and begin to feel comfortable with each other. The skilled conversationalist gives the other person something to talk about and elaborate on.

An abstract question invites the hearer to explore a large topic area and to share fairly complex ideas. This also has the effect of keeping the discussion fairly broad, to enable the participants to explore a wide variety of topics or subtopics. For example, I occasionally like to ask rather abstract questions of the executives in client organizations for whom I serve as a consultant. Questions like “How does your company relate to its competitors?” or “What seems to be the market for your particular service?” or “How would you state your overall corporate strategy in the simplest possible terms?” invite them to think broadly about what they want to do with their organizations.

Similarly, speculative questions invite the hearer to think about more possibilities than those currently known to exist. Questions like “What do you think might happen to the demand for your services if the bottom dropped out of the XYZ market?” or “How would you react if the employees in your organization petitioned to form a union?” invite them to reflect on possibilities that might deserve more careful consideration than they usually get.

A specialized kind of a question, the reflective question, really is not a question at all. It merely restates the other person’s statement in the form of a question. Reflective questions have certain specialized uses, such as in counseling situations and investigative work. For example, a patient in therapy might say, “Maybe I’ll just kill myself.” The therapist might respond gently, “You sometimes feel

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