It's fascinating what you learn when you are sunbathing

I have been away with all my family which includes wife, childen,their partners and my beautiful granddaugher Aimee. One lies there listeing to the banter which included everyone taking to aimee, 15 months old.She doesn't talk yet, just points and nods or shakes her head. It's all so easy for her becuase we all only asked closed questions.

having a nasty mind I wondered how Aimee would have coped with "What do you want to play with, your doll or teddy bear?"
A little more about questioning

Closed questions

There are two definitions that are used to describe closed questions. A common definition is:

A closed question can be answered with either a single word or a short phrase.

Thus 'How old are you?' and 'Where do you live?' are closed questions. A more limiting definition is:
A closed question can be answered with either 'yes' or 'no'.

Using closed questions

Closed questions have the following characteristics:

• They give you facts.
• They are easy to answer.
• They are quick to answer.
• They keep control of the conversation with the questioner.

Definition

An open question can be defined as:

An open question is likely to receive a long answer.

Although any question can receive a long answer, open questions deliberately seek longer answers, and are the opposite of closed questions.

Using open questions

Open questions have the following characteristics:

• They ask the respondent to think and reflect.
• They will give you opinions and feelings.
• They hand control of the conversation to the respondent

Open questions begin with such as: what, why, how, when, where,which, who.

Using open questions can be scary, as they seem to hand the baton of control over to the other person. However, well-placed questions do leave you in control as you steer their interest and engage them where you want them.

When opening conversations, a good balance is around three closed questions to one open question. The closed questions start the conversation and summarize progress, whilst the open question gets the other person thinking and continuing to give you useful information about them.

An extract from my book "I hate networking!"

This is a short extract to show readers the style of the book

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For the 'lazy' reader we have it in audio format too. Here are the details

Chapter 7 - Building relationships

The event 7:05 p.m.

“Hi, Will, I’m back.”

“Tell me all about it then.”

“Mike was precisely as I thought; welcoming and friendly. The first ‘challenge’ however was that he didn’t introduce me to the others.”

“And why do you think that was, bearing in mind you thought he was an experienced networker?”

“I know precisely why. He couldn’t remember their names!”

“Correct. So what did you do?”

“I asked him if I could introduce myself.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, I met Stewart, Celia, Joanne and Robert. And, using your techniques, I repeated their names and as you can see, I learnt them.”

“You really are making some progress here, Brian. By the way, how do you think Mike felt when you asked if you could introduce yourself?”

“I’ve not even thought about it.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. He was mightily relieved and tremendously grateful. Why? Because you got him out of a big hole, saving him a lot of embarrassment.”

“Now you mention it, I suppose I did. Hopefully he’ll remember that and the next time I bill him, he won’t quibble about the price!”

“What else happened?”

“Well, the group sort of split into two shortly after I arrived. I ended up talking to Robert, Celia moved off and Mike, Joanne and Stewart started talking scuba–diving …of all things.”

“What’s wrong with that then?”

“It’s a business-related event, it all seemed a bit frivolous to me.”

“I’d actually say quite the opposite. We’ll deal with what to talk about soon. But, tell me, how did your conversation go with Robert?”

“All right, I suppose.”

Kintish on holiday has time to reflect

I am 59 and just love helping people become more effective and confident networkers. But I can't keep doing 180 presentations per annum not only in the UK but continental Europe too.
"All work and no play makes jack a dull boy"...and all that!
But we have so many new ideas and just not enough person resource.
What is the answer?
We are going to franchise our system. The training is all modular , the marketing has a system ( we practise...to the letter...what we teach and our back room is fully systematised.
a perfect model for a franchise.
Interested?
View here first
Interested more? Call me, Will Kintish on 07939 205719 to explore ideas