Want To Improve Your Performance?

Did you know one of my favorite techniques to teach people is “Ask, don’t tell”?  (My clients call it “ADT”.)  Sounds funny, doesn’t it?  It means “ask the person a sincere question; don’t just keep telling them your opinion.”

When you are trying to help someone see your point-of-view, when you’re trying to get someone to see beyond their own opinion, or to agree with you, asking a question, then another question that builds on their answer, is a quick, clever, and very polite way to get their minds to start opening up, and maybe changing.

ADT is also one of my go-to methods when I absolutely must calm down and get my frustration or anxiety under control.  Pausing to ask a question is what does the trick.

If you’d like to strengthen your self-awareness, self-leadership, and resilience, “Ask them; don’t tell them” helps form every one of those skills in you.  Pausing to form a question means you’ve paused, and we know how essential the pause is in bringing your best cognitive brain into the conversation.  Pausing helps you settle yourself into a calm, aware state and to take a micro-second to restate to yourself what you are best intending happen in this conversation.  Pausing is an essential self-leadership technique, and “Ask, don’t tell” (ADT) is what to do when you pause.

Now, three new potent questions have come on the scene.  Imagine a crucial conversation with your boss after a client meeting and you’re asking for feedback….. imagine a crucial conversation with a co-worker when you’re earnestly – finally – trying hard to cultivate teamwork. Imagine yourself asking these questions:

• “How can I do better next time?”
• “What am I doing that I don’t even know I’m doing?”
• “What am I not doing that I don’t see?”

Those potent, beautiful questions work just as well with your husband or your estranged sister…

These questions are courtesy of Sheryl Sandberg, in her 2013 book Lean In, page 83. I recommend all the other pages too.

Have you had a chance to read Sandberg‘s book?  What do you think of her three questions?  Please leave a comment.