Stop asking questions

How many questions do you ask in a day? How many answers do you give? How many statements do you offer – where it’s your view, belief, or share, but without demanding or expecting an answer? Hahaaaaaa…. that was already 3 questions from my side.

I talked about kids recently. How we as parents can get into the trap of asking questions. Way too many. Because we want to connect, and that’s the only way we’re used to getting some form of communication back.

It would be the same for partners or colleagues. Some of us fire questions off all the time. Some not.

My personal example here is how my very observant husband years ago let me know that I asked questions all the time. You can call it a work-related injury from leading teams and from coaching for decades. But that’s just a poor excuse.

As I started listening with his ears, I was amazed at how many (trivial!!) small questions I could send out in a matter of minutes. And how hard it was to stop. I’ll say I’ve improved – but for now, maybe let’s NOT ask him yet what he thinks .

That other conversation ended up with the suggestion of offering more statements instead. Sharing our own point of view on something – or sharing something we had heard or experienced. And commenting on it simply from our own perspective. Sending it out there at the dinner table. Not expecting or demanding answers.

Sometimes you’ll get engagement, sometimes you won’t. But at least you offered a bit of your world – instead of asking and asking to try getting into their world. Or just sending bossy orders off, disguised as questions.

It links back to being.

Being instead of chasing. Being present and available instead of the “I have 5 min. now, tell me how your day was” kind of demanding conversation.

Enjoy scanning your relationships for question-overload – and then test out over the coming months, which difference it makes for your conversations and connections, as you start making changes. I was really tempted to end this blog with asking you a question. But I won’t.