Masters of Change
The Power of Great Questions to Create Deep Transformation
Tom O'Connor
I’ve had the privilege of knowing some tremendously skilful change agents, persuaders and communicators.
While their methods vary, there is one thing they all do, exceptionally well.
ASK QUESTIONS!
Ever since Bandler and Grinder put pen to paper and wrote the Structure of Magic Volume 1 in 1975, the field of NLP has been fascinated with the power of questions.
Unfortunately, most folks only learn to use the traditional NLP questions, so they miss out on all the OTHER great questions that change masters know and use.
In fact, great questions have just 4 elements that do the bulk of the work.
And when combined with the 6 elements of great questioning make transformation practically inevitable.
And in today’s video we’re going to look at some seminar footage of renowned NLP student Tony Robbins where all 10 elements are at work.
Watch the video now.
Then afterwards read on as I unpack 5 key points about how Tony created this seemingly remarkable transformation.
(If you have any problems playing the video, click here to watch.)
So how did you enjoy the video? What did you notice?
What stood out for you in how Tony created this transformation?
Take a moment to capture your thoughts.
While we don’t have time to give you a blow-by-blow move of how Tony and Neil created this transformation (transformation is always a collaborative process), I want to highlight the 5 most salient points for you so you can begin to start to do more of this yourself.
Sound good?
Let’s take a look at the big chunks.
- Did you notice how Tony used questions throughout?
Why do you think that was?
Asking quality questions is the fastest way to influence someone. What happens when you ask great questions – people make NEW connections which is why Tony makes use of them.
Telling people can be helpful, but ask great questions is FAR more powerful.
Most people, if we’re honest, ‘tell’ too much and ask too little.
Here’s a secret few people know:
Deep influence and transformation happens far more often when you ask great questions, not give 'expert' answers…
Think about this. How many times has a really great questions changed how you looked at things?
Speaking of which...
2 How many questions did Tony ask?
Give a guess.
In total Tony asked 42 questions in ~8 minutes.
That’s roughly one question every 20 seconds!
As a percentage, when you are helping someone how much time do you spend asking questions vs telling them what to do?
What would happen if you asked more and spoke less?
Zooming out for a moment...
3 How many people is Tony talking to?
Watch the video again and you’ll notice that Tony speaks to Neil and occasionally directly to the 2,000+ audience. While he’s talking to the audience, he’s actually doing the change work (constructing ideas, rewiring the man’s narrative, creating comparisons etc.) that rewrite the frame of reference Neil is holding – such that he can no longer maintain the ‘problem’.
But it looks like he’s primarily talking to the audience. Sneaky…
This is below the radar stuff most people don’t understand and know how to use. The seeming ‘side comments’ to the group are actually part of the intervention – it allows him to frame things in a NEW way and leads up to a new question which is how he cements the change…
Get it?
How much more powerful could your coaching, leadership or influence work be if you could do things with think kind of skill too?
4 Where does Tony direct Neil's attention?
We’re jumping ahead a bit here, but it is so important to get I want to begin to address it here.
One of the elements of truly great questions is they move attention and focus awareness.
Transforming people’s lives comes from disrupting how they represent the problem. That’s why Tony asks certain kinds of questions, in certain sequences – he starts with questions within Neil's model of the world, and quickly switches the lens to outside the frame of thinking he has been using.
Mmm, what effect do you think that has?
5 What kind of language does Tony use in his questions?
Are his questions full of complex ideas, stacked presuppositions that require some serious mental CPU power to comprehend?
Or are they mostly direct, simple questions that are easy to get?
Easy, right.
A lot of people trained in NLP think you need to stack complex presuppositions to ask great questions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Great questions, so called ‘killer questions’ are often made up of very simple language forms.
The magic in creating transformations is in the effects specific questions create.
I hope you are beginning to see how transformations can be created with ease by asking the right questions.
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