Questioning Skills Training
Ask the Better Question®
This unique workshop teaches the skills and thought processes for asking the better question. We cover the science behind why questions work in the way they do, different question structures, and the art of framing better questions to enhance the information gleaned from stakeholder or subject matter expert interviews, increase rapport and understanding of customers, and how to hold better coaching and performance review sessions.
Advanced Facilitation Skills Training
Successful facilitation entails so much more than mere notetaking or agenda building. Grounded in the decision-making and behavioral sciences, this highly acclaimed workshop covers topics such as the social dynamics of group behavior, why question agendas are vital to successful outcomes, methods to frame the problem-to-be-solved, diagnosing the talk of meetings, increasing engagement, and best practices in navigating complex issues.
OPEN WORKSHOP HOUSTON, TX OCTOBER 10-11, 2023
How to Facilitate a Decision Board Session
The distinguishing characteristics of teams making quality decisions includes their ability to successfully develop and execute the frame. In addition to covering the best practices of effective facilitation, this workshop assists decision facilitators with holding effective dialogues with decision review boards, questioning methods to mitigate biases present in subject matter expert interviews, and navigating the inevitable need for behavioral change.
OPEN WORKSHOP HOUSTON, TX OCTOBER 12, 2023
Facilitating Strategic Planning Workshops
Do you want to improve the quality of your strategic planning outcomes and commitment to action? Are you frustrated that the typical result is a list of ideas that are rarely implemented? Interested in learning idea generation techniques that are far more powerful than Brainstorming? Seeking to improve your questions to get better insight? This advanced 2-day workshop will address these issues and many more. Minimum participant requirements must be met.
Question Skills Training: Ask the Better Question®
This one-of-a-kind workshop teaches participants how to ask more effective questions to achieve better outcomes. The workshop structure focuses on a unique blend of topics that includes the neuroscience of why asking is better than telling, the psychological impact of different question structures, and considerations for sequencing questions. Workshop participants apply the techniques via class exercises, paired break-outs, and personal experiences.
Who Should Attend?
- Entrepreneurs seeking to understand their target market
- R&D or technical departments aspiring to improve the uptake of their designs with business units
- Organizational members desiring to enhance stakeholder relationships
- Sales managers needing to more effectively draw out your client’s value drivers
- Managers seeking to hold more productive performance reviews
- Coaches and consultants
- Meeting facilitators and leaders
- Negotiators
Questions Asked by Past Participants
- How can I improve the way in which I interview stakeholders? I am given only five minutes to talk with them!
- What are the questions that can help me understand my customer’s REAL problem?
- How can I make my performance review sessions more valuable with my employees?
- How can I get the business units to buy-in to our new technologies?
- How do I better understand what is really important to someone? They say they want something, yet when it is delivered they don’t use it.
- How can I get a group past compliance to commitment?
Advanced Facilitation Skills Training
Effective “must succeed” meeting outcomes require more skills than those of simple meeting management. Strong facilitators understand the value of a robust meeting design–one that incorporates behavioral principles and how people naturally think and decide. They confidently identify the best technique or tool to be used based on the question that needs to be answered and the dynamics of the group, rather than following some rigid process. They can recognize limiting patterns of talk and redirect the discussion to foster a more productive conversation where everyone is engaged. In meetings intended to choose the best path forward, these facilitators do not limit themselves to simply repeating or capturing what was said. They go beyond by asking the better questions that draw out underlying drivers and tap into what is not being said, thus helping the group to move forward and make aligned decisions.
This highly regarded workshop has been taught around the globe for over 20 years. It is specifically designed for those charged with facilitating problem-solving, project management, decision-making or other vital organizational meetings.
Who Should Attend
- Project managers and project teams
- Change management leaders
- Strategic planning facilitators
- Agile and Six Sigma facilitators
- Leaders of organizational transformation initiatives
- Human Resource managers
- Decision leads
Questions Asked by Past Participants
- What do I do with the person who doesn’t even want to be there?
- How do I deal with someone who is pushing back against the process (they see no value in it)?
- How can I improve the fact that our meetings often end with no decision ever made?
- How do I better engage people on my Teams calls? The crickets chirp ever-so loudly in my meetings (gets even worse when dealing with different cultures).
- I often am dealing with a group of stakeholders who have a number of competing objectives. How do I resolve this?
- Everyone agrees on the path forward in the meeting but then after the meeting you hear the disagreements. How do I deal with this? I am always braced for receiving emails post-meeting.
- What’s a good way to select an alternative from a list of options? We often end up voting.
- What are methods to ensure balanced engagement – some folks are doing all of the talking.
How to Facilitate a Decision Board Session
When decision boards fail to think of themselves as part of the decision process but rather more like the judge and the jury of the final proposal, they limit their mindset. That can compromise decision quality since this limited mindset fails to promote behaviors such as the following, all of which characterize an effective decision board.
- Evaluating the nature of the challenge the board is facing and the implications of a “no decision”
- Getting clarity on key stakeholders and potential implications for each of the agreed-upon objectives and the likely tradeoffs to be optimized during the process
- Probing the key uncertainties of each option and what the team has found may be critical to their choice
This half-day workshop explores the questioning and facilitation techniques essential in fostering the behaviors and mindsets essential to decision quality. Designed for decision facilitators, project managers and leaders.
Questions Asked by Past Participants
- How do I handle the leader in the room who jumps right to “choose alternative” and anchors the process at the end instead of the beginning?
- Our decision board members tend to default to becoming the final arbitrators and try to find holes in our thinking – how to respond?
- What methods can I use to more fully engage our decision board? Some show up and don’t seem to know why they are there.
- My decision board members tend to ask more detailed questions that reflect their previous technical backgrounds. I don’t need another geologist on the team! How do I mitigate this?
- How do I get them to agree on a path forward?
- When an upper manager says something, I don’t get the sense that the rest of the decision board fully understands his perspective, but no one asks for clarity. Should I step in?
Facilitating Strategic Planning Workshops
Effective strategic planning workshop outcomes require a broader range of skills than those of simple meeting management. Successful facilitators adeptly select the facilitation tools that fit the questions to be asked and ambiguities to be resolved rather than blindly following a rigid process. These facilitators are able to frame their questions in a way that mitigates the various decision biases that can otherwise affect decision quality. They understand the different components of creating a sound strategy and design their meetings to incorporate these components, thus ensuring that their team fully understands the key uncertainties and risks and future scenarios that will guide idea generation.
Do you want to improve the quality of your strategic planning outcomes and commitment to action? Are you frustrated that the typical result is a list of ideas that are rarely implemented? Interested in learning idea generation techniques that are far more powerful than Brainstorming? This 2-day workshop will address these issues and many more.
Minimum participant requirements of 5 to 7 years facilitation experience and exposure and application of basic facilitation skills and traditional meeting management tools must be met.
Participant Feedback
- Best course I have taken in my entire career.
- Be prepared to practice, practice, and practice. Full of role plays and chances to apply the tools.
- I previously learned a process, but not how to facilitate that process. Absolutely invaluable.
- A must-have course for anyone in a leadership position.
- Having a background in facilitation is a must-have.
- This is the second time I have taken this workshop and I learned even more this time.
- My boss was blown away when she watched me facilitate with her leadership team.
- Our VP can always tell who has been to Katherine’s facilitation training.