The Art Of Conversation: Open Questions

January 30th 2008

Last week I published a guest post from Chrissy of Executive Assistant’s Toolbox about the art of conversation. One point that stood out for me was asking “questions about what people think and what they’ve experienced” This is typically achieved with open ended questions, which encourage the person you are talking with to say and reveal more, rather than giving “yes” or “no” answers. Ironically, last week I also had a training session at work that discussed the importance of using such questions. The problem is, in the heat of conversation - especially with a new person or a customer - it’s hardly realistic to stop and pause while you analyze what open question to ask.

As this blog is all about useful, actionable advice I looked into a practical approach that would help when conversing with people. While I considered making a long list of open questions, it was not practical to try and remember them all. After some experimenting I’ve found that the trick is to remember the following five words:

How
What
When
Where
Which
Why

Why are they important? The vast majority of open questions can be formed by starting the question with one of those words. For example, “do you live in New York?” will likely yield a very short answer, however “where do you live?” will encourage a much more lengthy response. In practice these five words are easy to remember and will really help open up your conversations with people.

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