Episode 35: How to get better at asking powerful questions - the ’keys to your brain’, with Kate Christiansen

Leadership Amplified by Dr Karen Morley

In this episode I speak with Kate about how leaders can create more focus and be more influential through the way they engage with complexity, and in particular, how they use questions. Kate is the creator of the CURLY APPROACH™ which uses question-based frameworks to create clarity out of complexity. She is the author of two books: ‘The Thrive Cycle: How to build a customer-driven, unstoppable organisation by activating its adaptive DNA’ and ‘Curly Conversations for Teams’. I’m a huge advocate for questions, and the power of open questions in coaching, where they empower others and help unlock new options that create growth and change. I just loved Kate’s approach to questions and her proposition that they are keys to your brain. She says they’re pathways into what we know, and they help us to explore and discover the unknown. Questions are more powerful at helping to get buy-in to change, they can inspire people and help to create energy and momentum. That’s gotta make life easier! Here are four keys to try: 📌 Use ‘could’ rather than ‘should’: the brain responds to ‘should’ by trying to find the one right answer, whereas it responds to ‘could’ by identifying options 📌 Ask don’t tell - avoid telling as it is answering a question that nobody has asked much less cared about 😆 📌 Ask smaller questions: asking a question that is too big or all-encompassing can be overwhelming. Think about the question process as a triple jump rather than a long jump; a series of small questions will get us there more easily than trying to leap the whole distance in one go 📌 Don’t stress about getting your question/s word-perfect, focus on your intention 🤔 What piece of Kate’s advice might you put into practice to ask more powerful questions?