In order to get the change in behaviour you need from your team members (or child, spouse, partner or friend) you need to guide their thinking.

The key tool you have to guiding their thinking are the words you choose to use, the questions you choose to ask and the conversations you choose to have. Today we’re going to focus on the questions that you choose to ask.

Last week, I recommended that you do yourself a favour. When you’re correcting behaviour, or seeking behavioural change, I recommended that you ask open-ended questions to get your team member talking; to get the words coming out of their mouth rather than yours.

I’m hoping that you tried this out and received the benefits of taking this approach. But there is one trap you need to side-step when confronting any sort of performance problem or issue with behaviour. And that trap is asking ‘why?’

Let’s put this in context. Let’s imagine a very simple situation to illustrate the problem this causes. Imagine that it’s important for your team members to arrive at work on time, and one of them has just arrived almost 10 minutes late for the second day in a row.

If you ask them why they are late, what will you get? Excuses – yes? I suggest that this approach will create a defensive mind-set rather than a problem-solving mind-set. A defensive mind-set is not the sort of thinking pattern you want to encourage when you’re seeking behaviour change.

So, what do you do? Well, the past is just a memory. It is the person’s future behaviour you want to change, because you sure can’t change their past behaviour.

So, you want to create buy-in for future change from the person involved. To do so, you need to ask questions that encourage them to talk. Asking questions that focus on the consequences of their actions and their future behaviour tends to be much more productive.

Rather than asking ‘why?’ (as in “Why are you late?”), you could ask questions such as:

“How do you think your team mates feel when you arrive late?”

“Why is it important for you to be at work on time?”

“What can you do differently from now on to ensure that you’re at work on time?”

“Tell me about what might prevent you from getting to work on time in the future?”

“When will you make that change?”

Notice the mind-set these sorts of questions encourage. Much more of a reflective and problem-solving thinking pattern. When you’re on the receiving end of this it feels more like you’re being treated fairly and receiving good coaching rather than being reprimanded and told what to do. And you’re being treated much more like an adult who has their own solutions to the problems they face.

The end result is much higher buy-in to change. You get it by using open-ended questions focussed around how the other person could improve their future behaviour.