Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

Where are you hurting?
What’s troubling you?
What have you tried?
Betty enjoys helping people, guiding them so they see and understand
themselves more clearly. Her objective is to steer them toward “compassion and
empathy for themselves,” she explains. “Therein lies a lot of the healing.”
Betty often begins with one of those simple open-ended questions that just
invites people to talk.
What brings you here?
Then she listens. She listens for how the patient defines her problem or talks
about her struggle. She “listens” with her eyes, looking for signals and signs of
stress or anxiety. The color of someone’s face may change. Their nose may get
red. They may look like they’re fighting back tears. And she might say:
What are you feeling right now?
Are you sad now?
Some will say yes. Some cry. They share a powerful, intimate moment.
“Some people will tell you the tears have been there and I haven’t been able
to cry them. Or I haven’t been able to access this emotion. Or … I haven’t been
able to cry and I also don’t sleep very well.” Betty believes such an experience
represents a gift for therapist and patient alike. “It’s an acknowledgement the
patient is feeling safe,” she says, “safe enough with you to be vulnerable, to
reveal themselves to you and to themselves.”
Betty often follows up with one of the most effective questions you can ask,

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and it isn’t even a question.
Tell me more.
That’s what got the patient we’ll call Roger to open up. Roger revealed that
his marriage, which has been rocky for a few years, has gotten even worse lately.
He and his wife barely talk. He had a brief affair a few months ago, but it’s over
now. He wasn’t looking for someone to get involved with; it just happened. He
knows he’s at a crossroads. He is sorry about the whole situation, but he finds
himself lost and confused. As for the affair, he thinks maybe it happened
because his marriage left him feeling isolated and unloved. Maybe he was just
vulnerable and met someone who was captivated by him when his wife was not.
He doesn’t know where things went wrong. He’s trying to figure it out.
Now Betty can ask:
Did you want the marriage?
Do you want to deal with it?
Have you had therapy?
She explores Roger’s level of awareness, whether he is tuned in to his own
feelings and to others. She wants to know how he sees this marriage and what
kind of conversation he’s had with himself.
Has your spouse been unhappy, too?
What is your picture of the marriage?
What’s your picture of yourself as a husband?
Have you said to your spouse, “I think we’re in trouble. I think we
need help”?
Betty wants Roger to talk about his feelings, goals, and values.
How far out of integrity are you with your own vision of who you told
yourself you were going to be as a husband?
How does that feel?
How do you talk to yourself about that?
Where do you want to be with yourself now?
Betty is following a line of inquiry she calls “accessing the internal

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dialogue.” She wants her patients to examine and question themselves: “I might
say, it sounds like you’re having an internal conversation, argument, or dilemma
with yourself. Who’s talking and what is each part saying? Do any of those
voices sound like anyone else you know?” This perspective taking looks inward.
It’s where her patients explore their own empathy and how they apply it to
themselves and others.
Betty gets people talking—to her, to themselves, to one another. She tries to
get couples face-to-face. She issues a challenge: Sit and listen for two minutes
without responding or rebutting. Maintain eye contact. Try to relax. Ask
questions rather than accuse. Try to understand the other person from the other
person’s perspective. She calls it “slow and careful and tender work.”
“I often tell people you have everything you need and plenty to spare to
solve this. And I say I will help you. I’m trying to empower them.”
Betty asks a therapist’s questions. These questions are designed to explore.
They search for understanding to locate a happier, healthier person. They reflect
Betty’s empathy and they encourage it in her patients.
License and Limits
Empathetic questions generate some of the most personal conversations we
have. They can be tricky, though, because there is no clear end point. One
person’s relieved revelation is another’s do-not-touch secret. Knowing how and
when to respect zones of guarded privacy is a tough call. It’s why Betty Pristera
sometimes defers to “tell me more” as she gets to know her clients. That’s why
Terry Gross has subjects where she follows rather than leads.
When I interview people, I feel I have license to ask just about anything.
Most of the individuals I question are public figures. They expect to be asked
and are skilled at telling you when you go out of bounds. Even so, there are
things I won’t ask about unless it is germane to their public lives or performance.
I won’t gratuitously ask about a person’s personal life. I won’t ask about pain
someone has experienced just to hear them talk about it. I ask about illness or
grief only if it’s relevant or sheds light on a person’s character.
For all these reasons, empathetic questioning requires close and constant
listening for words and tone and mood. As Helen Riess and Betty Pristera noted,
listening empathetically involves more than your ears because people send
signals in a variety of ways about how they’re feeling. They may talk freely or
they may clam up, fearful of what they may discover. Reading those signals,

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asking openly, and listening intently is a big part of empathy itself.

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