Asking Questions

Exercise 4 · The questions that kill a story, and the ones that open it

At a glance

Time	~10 minutes (two paired rounds)
Group size	Any. Works in pairs.
Format	Pairs, two timed rounds
Materials	A timer
You will need to	Call the rounds and the swaps, and hold students to their assigned role

Why this exercise

Good listening includes good questions — but bad listening often looks like questions too. The same question can open a wide door for the speaker or cut the thread of their thought. The difference is rarely in the content of the question; it is in the intention behind it and its timing.

Students first practice asking destructive (but technically relevant) questions, then immediately practice asking constructive (but about a boring topic) questions. The contrast lands fast and is hard to forget.

How to run it

Round one (up to 3 min) — questions that kill the story

Speaker: Tell the most interesting story you can about your life — a close call, a strange coincidence, or a day that changed you. Keep trying to tell it, even when interrupted.
Listener: Fifteen seconds in, start asking relevant questions that block the story. Where exactly? What year? Which airline? What was the weather like? How old were you? The questions are technically relevant; their effect is to prevent the story from ever arriving.

Tips

If you see the class is suffering, you can end it after about 2 minutes; participants get the idea.
You can walk around and bother the speakers too (e.g., “excuse me, do you have the time?”).
You can swap and repeat, or do it on one side only. If you swap, do it also for Round two.

Round two (3 min per side) — questions that open a story

Speaker: Tell the most boring story you can think of — how you brush your teeth, your commute, your laundry routine. Surrender to the questions; do not try to maintain your original topic.
Listener: Pretend it is the most interesting story you have ever heard. Ask about feelings, not just facts: “How did you feel in that moment?” “What would the opposite feeling be for you?” “When did you last feel that?” Expand.

Debrief

Ten minutes, in plenary. Ask:

In round one, as the speaker, how did your energy change as the questions piled up?
In round two, did the “boring” story actually stay boring?
Which of your own real questions are closer to round one than you’d like to admit?

Teaching adaptations

Large lecture (100+): Both rounds run at adjacent seats with no rotation.
Online (synchronous): Breakout pairs for the two question rounds; two volunteers can model each round first in the main room.
By course type: In leadership/coaching, dwell on round two’s feeling questions as the engine of respectful inquiry.

What the research says

Questions are not just information-gathering — they shape the conversation and the relationship. Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, and Gino (2017) found that asking more questions, and especially follow-up questions that build on what the other just said, increases how much they like you and how much they disclose. Van Quaquebeke and Felps (2018) theorize respectful inquiry — leading by asking open questions and listening to the answers — as a driver of autonomy, competence, and relatedness at work. Round one shows the shadow side: questions deployed without listening behind them push people away.

References

Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097
Van Quaquebeke, N., & Felps, W. (2018). Respectful inquiry: A motivational account of leading through asking questions and listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0537