Food for thought: Incisive questions

Thinking can be bad for your health and your career. The wrong kind of thinking, that is. The limiting type. Say you are worrying about an upcoming client meeting. It is a very sophisticated client and you have little experience in their sector or company. You are better prepared than for any other presentation you have done, yet you are still lacking confidence. What's going on here? Your mind is churning a limiting assumption over and over again: you cannot add value to your client because you don't know enough. The meeting doesn't go very well, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How can we get out of these circles of limiting thinking? Enter Nancy Kline's "incisive questions". An incisive question accurately identifies the limiting assumption that is holding us back and replaces it with a freeing one. In our example, a possible incisive question would be "If you knew that you can add real value to this client, how would you present to them?". And a door of possibilities opens up.

I fully recommend Nancy Klein's book "Time to Think", which is really a book on listening rather than on thinking (perhaps she thought "Time to Listen" was a limiting title?).

Here is a list of other possible questions Kline has found particularly incisive. Have a go and free your thinking!