3.
Define key questions

Good questions

Our lives are given fundamental meaning by the questions we ask and that are asked of us.

People's ability to reflect on the world and ask questions has been essential to progress and development. "What does it mean to be human?" This was the question posed by S?ren Kierkegaard. The search for answers consumed the whole of his brief life and laid the foundation of existentialism. "How can we create a free, living, natural people's enlightenment?" asked N.F.S. Grundtvig, laying the foundation of the Danish public school system.

What will I be when I grow up? What matters most to me? What should I study? Where will I live? With whom? Questions set a direction and focus our attention. Whether we are dealing with fundamental, personal, or organizational questions, good questions inspire us to seek meaningful answers. It is therefore worth spending the time to formulate good questions.

"If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. Because when I know the question, I can solve the problem in less than five minutes."

-Attributed to Albert Einstein

We gather around questions. Many organizations, projects, and meetings have been created to find answers to one or more shared important questions.

"How can we create a better everyday life for the many people?"

If you work at IKEA, this is a well-known question examined on a daily basis across departments and hierarchies, even today, more than 70 years after IKEA was founded (Ingvar Kamprad, "Testament of a Furniture Dealer," 1976).

"How can we create educational programs, which everyone can complete, and that foster young people capable of meeting life's challenges?"

Then Minister of Education Christine Antorini asked the above question at the 2014 annual summit in Sor?. She brought together 120 experts on education for two days of dialogue on the development of Danish youth education.

"How can we accelerate the use of pen and paper and show the world that it is at least as important to learn to draw as it is to learn to read, write, and count?"

This is the question driving us in our work at Bigger Picture.

Good facilitation questions support your process design. In the previous chapter we introduced ten questions that could help you create a cohesive process design. In this chapter we show how questions can support your process design: How can you design questions that fit the purpose of your process, help the process forward toward its goal, and ensure that concrete results are created that can be used in the future?

What questions are most relevant for the participants in your next process?

The path to dialogue

When a good question is addressed to a group, it works like an invitation to examine, discover, and explore great answers together.

A good facilitator promotes and stimulates constructive dialogue by offering a focused framework, asking guiding questions, and suggesting adjustments as necessary. The goal is for a group to get to the point where they "think" together, creating new and productive ideas together and developing and sharing new insights. The path to dialogue requires that the group members can speak and listen openly and honestly to one another without resistance. As a facilitator, you can support this by using various types of questions combined in a particular sequence:

• - In the beginning of a process, it is useful to ask questions that explicitly refer to the talk-in-turns principle and create an expectation that participants listen to one another.
• - The middle of a process benefits from exploratory and open-ended questions.
• - The end of the process calls for more reflective and closing questions.

Our path to good dialogues was inspired by the American management coach William Isaacs and is presented in simplified form here. The definitions of dialogue and discussion are ours, as are the various examples of questions.

On Isaacs's path to good dialogue we face a choice in every conversation: We can choose to suspend judgment and remain open, or we can choose to judge another person's position and defend our own. Advocates who defend their own position are cut off from one another, and as a result, each ends up thinking on their own. If, instead, participants choose to suspend judgment, dialogue brings them closer together, and then it becomes possible to think together. As a facilitator your challenge is to design questions, and facilitate the conversation about them, in a way that helps groups think together. The goal is a reflective learning dialogue in which participants jointly develop shared meanings and insights rather than simply exchanging opinions.

DIALOGUE

Origin: from Greek dialogos, "conversation."

Our definition: A dialogue is a collective process where those involved jointly examine, explore, and discover-through speech, text, or drawing-new perspectives on a given subject.

Discussion

Origin: from Latin discutere, "to break into pieces." Our definition: A discussion is a crossroads where opposing views meet (in speech, text, or drawing), where positions are marked, and where individuals define their boundaries.

Examples of questions

The talk-in-turns principle:

• - Emma, what do you expect from this collaboration?

Shows active listening:

• - Robert, what is the most important thing you heard Jane say?
• - Where do you see similarities between the perspectives we have heard?

Supports reflective dialogue:

• - When you say X, Sofia, what is this based on?
• - Why is it important to focus on X?

Supports learning dialogue:

• - On the basis of what we have heard, what is the best way forward?

Function of the question

As a facilitator, questions are your most important tool. They develop, engage, inspire innovation, and enable good dialogues.

Opening and closing dialogues. The function and timing of the question are important to consider when designing a series of questions for a process. Some questions are open-ended and invite numerous and diverse answers. Others are closed and call for conclusion, choices, and decisions. Working with the function of a question and placing it where it best fits in the process is important for the flow of the process, the participants' experience, and the content of the answers that participants can produce.  

When we design a series of questions for a process, we therefore do it with what we call the process diamond in the back of our minds. The process diamond is an interpretation of Sam Kaner's "Diamond of Participatory Decision-Making," which he presents in his book The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. We have simplified Kaner's diamond slightly to focus here on the various functions that facilitation questions have and on their placement in the process.

According to Kaner, a facilitation process can be divided into three zones: the divergent zone, the "groan zone," and the convergent zone.

The process diamond

THE DIVERGENT ZONE: PHASES 1 AND 2

In the divergent, opening zone, there is freedom and openness. Different perspectives are collected here, and alternatives are sought. This is an open phase where participants are trained to say "yes/and" rather than "no/but." This zone is fundamentally about creating shared knowledge on a given subject or question. In this opening zone there is space for a high degree of diversity in thinking and ideas. There are two phases in the divergent zone. Phase 1 asks questions that invite open and diverse answers. Questions in Phase 2 promote the formation of a broad common framework of understanding.

GROAN ZONE: PHASE 3

The groan zone is a point in a process where confusion and frustration usually arise in participants. Here, the complexity of the subject or question is most obvious, and participants may feel there is no clear way forward from this point. In this Phase 3 zone, the function of the question is to help the group manage and accept difference and uncertainty. The questions must be designed so they support the participants in tackling frustration and finding a way forward.

THE CONVERGENT ZONE: PHASES 4 AND 5

In the convergent, closing zone, participants shall evaluate what they have created. They must summarize key points, prioritize, and group their knowledge for final conclusion. The group must collectively take responsibility for what they have produced. The convergent zone comprises the end phases of the process, Phases 4 and 5. The function of the questions in Phase 4 is to get participants to create cohesion by connecting and grouping their content. In Phase 5 the questions must be formulated so they clearly call on participants to make decisions and conclude the process.

The process diamond at the macro and micro levels

The role and responsibility of a...