When are questions better than answers?
The Challenge
Recall a time when a mentor helped you think through a solution to a complex problem. Identify two questions your mentor asked that helped you stretch your thinking about a problem. Now in your own role as a mentor, identify two questions you could ask one of your staff that would help them expand their thinking about solutions to a current problem.
Why do this?
Using questions as a teaching tool encourages the development of critical thinking skills. Also, as shown in the challenge, it can be helpful to use your own past learning experiences to help you develop the skills of people you mentor.
Teaching someone to develop the ability to solve problems quickly and effectively helps them develop long-term skills that will generalize to other situations. Questions can be used to seek clarification, explore assumptions, probe for reasoning, look for alternate viewpoints, and look for implications and consequences of a decision.
What’s next?
Identify several types of questions you can use the next time someone brings a complex problem to you for review. Practice using deliberate questioning as a teaching tool.
