As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation:
Someone asks a great open question, then follows it with a couple choices for the response. For example- What is it that bother you most about this situation? Is it A or is it B?
I could make an intervention like this: “Group, how are we working with open-ended questions in this session?” “What are the impacts of working with closed questions or binary answers?” “How do we want the questions to be asked from now on?”
I would intervene to make a reminder that there should be just one question on the table at a time, so suggest that, the question asked is the first question and the respondent be given time to answer.
As a Coach, I would like to intervene like this: “Hello team, last question was closed-ended questions or opened questions?”, “How closed-ended questions affect to quality of our session currently?”, “How to change to opened-question?”
As an action learning coach, I would intervene to make a reminder
Hello team, What happens when we ask many questions at once?
What question do you want to ask?
If a member chooses a question, it is still a closed question or a question with only 2 answers.
I will ask again.
How does your question become an open-ended question?
It seems therefore that the question was not open ended as there were limited responses. As the coach I would lean in and ask “did you intend for that to be a close ended question?” if the response is positive, I would think it is fine. If the person responded ‘no’. Then I would ask “what question do you really want answered?”
I will intervene : ” Hello A , what do you need to clarify ?
“What if we ask closed questions?”
” To dig deeper, according to the Team, how should we ask questions in the next minutes?