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

What was he thinking?
Could he be reached?
Off to the side, in one-on-one conversations, Hinckley offered a few words
and opened up just a little. “He would talk to me after group therapy,” Barry
recalled. “Hinckley thought we were about the same age so he didn’t feel
threatened by me.” It’s not hard to see why. Barry is soft spoken, his voice
gentle and mellifluous. He listens with his eyes. He used those attributes to
slowly develop some rapport with the young man who nearly killed a president.

---

“I was able to sit with him outside the building and I got a little of his history
and was able to better elicit his story of how he came to do what he did.” Barry
won’t provide details out of respect for Hinckley’s privacy, but he learned that a
deliberate, respectful process of asking and providing a sympathetic ear could
prompt a would-be assassin to talk.
Solving Puzzles
Over the years, Barry built on his fascination with human puzzles. He developed
protocols and practices for how to talk to and question potential assassins,
terrorists, school shooters, and disgruntled employees. He became an expert in
threat assessment. His approach is proactive and his purpose is clear: Talk to
people before they act and elicit information to determine whether they are on a
path to violence. He teaches what to ask, when to respond, and how to listen.
It’s worth pointing out that Barry’s methods do not involve the good-cop,
bad-cop approach you see in the movies, where one interrogator intimidates and
threatens while the other offers the sympathetic ear. He does not teach in-your-
face screaming, where a questioner tries to frighten or intimidate someone into
opening up. And he has nothing to do with “enhanced interrogation” of the sort
Americans used in Afghanistan and Iraq, intended to crush the spirit and force
the subject to talk.
Barry teaches “rights respecting” questioning, which most experts say is the
most effective way to get a hostile person to open up. His objective is to lower a
person’s defenses and move his or her brain out of red alert territory. His
questions are framed to generate conversation, however halting, as a means of
establishing trust and building a dynamic that will coax information from the
most reticent personalities.
Strip away the prime-time drama from Barry’s characters and you have a
screenplay that might feature your family, your friends, or your workplace.
Someone is keeping a secret. Someone is plotting. Someone isn’t telling you
what you need to know. If you can use bridging questions in the right way, you
can get people to talk, draw them out, and get a picture of the path they are
traveling. Step one is to ratchet down the tension.
Barry adheres to a psychological theory, developed by Nobel Prize–winning
psychologist Daniel Kahneman, that posits two “systems” in which the human
brain operates. System One is a sort of low gear; it goes anywhere and allows us
to make decisions easily and come up with ready answers. Consider it your

---

brain’s autopilot. It goes on when your surroundings and reference points are
familiar. If someone asks you what’s two plus two, you answer “four”
automatically, without effort. It takes no effort to come up with the answer. In
System One, which Kahneman calls “cognitive ease,” we feel relaxed,
comfortable, and in control. A questioner might put someone in System One by
asking about the weather or an article of clothing, or even by offering a cup of
coffee. A warm and familiar gesture, the coffee becomes a reassuring prop.
System Two triggers the brain’s overdrive, making it spin faster, work harder,
and use more oxygen. System Two is a response to the unfamiliar, the complex,
the difficult or frightening. A tough math problem or contentious situation can
put us in this state. You stop, react, scramble for a response.
A brain in System Two is on alert, with its guard up. Unfamiliar or
unfriendly surroundings can shift the mind into this gear. We begin watching
every word we say. What’s four hundred thirty-five divided by nine? Did you
take my bottle of gin?
System Two is likely the state your teen is in if he thinks you are accusing or
judging him. It’s the state you are in if your boss gives you a harsh performance
review. It’s how just about every suspect is reacting during questioning.
Barry teaches agents how to put their subjects’ brains in System One, into
low gear, as much as possible. He tells his students to start with questions the
interviewee is comfortable addressing, even if the questions are not relevant to
the issue at hand. Ask about a common experience or a part of the interviewee’s
life that is known and not controversial.
Suppose an agent is paying a visit to Joseph, whose name surfaced in an
investigation. For now, Joseph is being treated as a source, not a suspect.
Walking into the living room, the agent notices a piece of art on the wall.