Designing questions to provoke brightness of the future thinking
How writing a question set changes the feel of an interview
Thursday November 6, 2008 -- Jennifer Higgs
For a generative journalist, asking a good question goes beyond the traditional 5 W’s (of who, what, when, where and why) — it’s a question that makes the interviewee think in a new way, or describe thoughts that maybe he or she has not yet voiced.

When someone says, “Wow, that’s a really good question,” during an interview that’s a pretty big kudos to the journalist. From the journalist’s perspective it re-enforces how important and worthwhile it is to develop question sets thoughtfully. Asking a question can give a new idea an identity and spark innovation.

This week I sat down with our executive editor, Peter Pula, to discuss the question set for a curriculum of stories talking with people who we recently met at the WorldBlu LIVE conference on democracy in the workplace. The questions are to explore what comes next for the movement.

Here’s the original set of questions:

• How do you think we can build the movement towards the goal of 20,000 democratic workplaces?
• What can be done to bring more organizations into the democratic workplaces field?
• What else is out there that you’ve seen that could help?
• Is there anything you can see your organization doing to promote democracy in the workplace?
• What do you think would happen if all the current WorldBlu organizations promote its growth?
  

There was something about this question set that just didn’t click. We talked about the taxonomy and the similarity of the questions. But perhaps most importantly we asked ourselves how would we feel about answering these questions? Would we come out of the interview feeling motivated, inspired, and energetic or rather drained, tired and confused?

With some thought we developed this question set:

• What comes next for the democratic workplaces movement?
• How could democratic organizations and WorldBluer’s work together to advance the movement?
• What do you think would happen if we did that?
• What specific contributions can your organization make?

Though an improvement, it seemed these questions still had a bit of an onerous feel to them.

Back to the drawing board, we thought about Appreciative Inquiry (AI) — an approach to organizational development that builds on strengths and what’s working. As stated in The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, “Positive questions bring out the best in people, inspire positive action, and create possibilities for positive futures.

“But why do positive questions unleash enthusiasm and flourishes of positive change within human systems? They do so because they amplify the organization’s positive core. They magnify the essence of the organization at its best-it’s remembered past, its enacted present, and its imagined future.”

With this in mind, we re-worked the question set to:

• What excites you most about the democratic workplaces movement?
• What would you like to see more of and why?
• What can be done to make that happen?
• How could your organization help make that happen?

The open-ended format and focus on strengths generates the tone, feel and energy of the thinking. As we continue to look for best practices and use AI in our question design, this type of exercise will be a useful lesson learned.

We will strive to design questions to inspire hope, generate solutions, spark action — and lead towards positive change.

Related Stories:
Appreciative questions generate rich stories and inspire action

Appreciative Inquiry approach could transform journalism

If you have feedback on this article, please contact jennifer(at)axiomnews.ca or 800-294-0051.