Questions to engage Activity

Activity questions - orb showing question mark to engage activity

Using questions to drive exploration, dialogue and insight

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Good questions are the most powerful tools available to us

The questions we use to support Activity are often embedded or implicit in the tools and templates we use to drive participation.

However, broadening the participation can also be achieved by means of considered use of pairing and grouping to address the questions below:

 

Simple Questions

  • How would you handle this situation?
  • What ideas or actions do you recommend?
  • What problem are you trying to solve?
  • What hunch are you trying to confirm?
  • Can you finish (one of) these incomplete sentences in 1 minute or less:
    • If only….
    • I have to… … that’s just the way it is.
  • If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about the current situation, what would that be?
  • If this was your business, what would you do differently and why?
  • What opportunities do YOU see for making progress on this challenge?

 

Structured/Sequenced Questions

  • If they would ____ then I could ______!
  • How is it that we are ____ and we are ____ simultaneously? (For more information see Liberating Structures page on Wicked Questions)
  • What would you do if you really wanted to mess this up? Is there any way that happens to any extent now? How might we prevent that or mitigate its impact?
  • What happened? So what (are the implications of that)? What (do we need to do) next? (For more information see Liberating Structures page on W3)

While these questions can be asked simply of individuals or groups, it is often helpful to consider more sophisticated or progressive groupings to better support engagement with the question and refinement of the answers. Options to do this can be found in Grouping options within meeting sessions

 

Advanced Questions

As stated earlier these are inherent in many of the tools and templates that are available. A good start to considering what question you want to ask and which tool you want to use to do it, is to use the meeting tool selector.

If you are planning to use the tool as part of a virtual meeting, there is a really whizzy version of the selector available which automatically opens up and enables you to use it immediately in an appropriate whiteboard tool. And it sticks around as your own personal selector so you can further adapt it and modify it as you see fit. To use it (it’s free) click here.

Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.