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1 - What do they really want? Using your analytical thinking skills to understand the question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

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Summary

Picture the scene. You're in the kitchen getting ready for a dinner party and you think your partner has just said: ‘Have you got the time?’ So you could reply: ‘It's ten to eight and the guests are going to be here any moment, so let's get on with it.’ Or you could say: ‘Do you mean what time is it now or how long does it take to cook?’ To which your partner replies patiently: ‘No, darling – did you remember to buy the thyme?’

By simply telling your partner the time you'll have taken the question at face value. But by answering the question with a question you'll have dealt with any potential misunderstanding from the outset – and in this case, misunderstanding there certainly was. The question used in this little domestic drama was a forced choice question – one of several specific question types, each of which can be deployed for a particular purpose. In this instance, it helped to defuse a little bit of potential personal strife. When you use this and other questioning techniques at work, it can save you a deal of trouble from the outset.

You'll deal with many of your enquirers orally, face to face. The possibilities for misunderstandings are endless – accent, articulation, assumptions, all can send you scurrying off in totally the wrong direction, wasting both your time and the enquirer's. But with face-to-face enquiries, you are at least offered lots of clues; most of what we communicate is nonverbal, so you are able to glean what you can from facial expression, eye contact, body language. But you are deprived of these clues when your queries come in by phone, and you have even less to go on when they arrive in written form – by e-mail or text for instance. We'll look at remote enquiry handling in Chapter 2 – but right now, let's assume that the enquirer is standing in front of you. In our journey from what the enquirer asked to what they actually wanted to know, we need to deploy our analytical thinking skills.

Type
Chapter
Information
Successful Enquiry Answering Every Time
Thinking your way from problem to solution
, pp. 1 - 26
Publisher: Facet
Print publication year: 2017

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