A member of the leadership team in the Market Access division of a global pharma company approached us to create and facilitate a team building workshop around the Power of Great Questions. The purpose of this workshop was to help the team incorporate the learnings into what they do every day, make them better partners, be more customer focused, get better end results in a more efficient and impactful way, and help reduce re-dos.
We started our search for proven questioning techniques through our internal database and external sources. To better asses the current state of the participants questioning abilities, a survey was conducted, revealing key challenges around asking the right questions and reducing the time it takes to get to the root cause.
We started our search for proven questioning techniques through our internal database and external sources. To better asses the current state of the participants questioning abilities, a survey was conducted, revealing key challenges around asking the right questions and reducing the time it takes to get to the root cause.
After looking through ~15 precedents for key insights to help solve those challenges, two companies were selected to create case studies around their success with asking powerful questions.
We found that the most powerful questions fall into six categories:
The most powerful questioning strategy to uncover the root cause of a problem is the Probing Question technique. Probing questions are helpful for gaining clarification to ensure that you have the whole story and understand it thoroughly. This technique is most commonly known as the 5W1H (What, Why, Who, When, Where, and How?). During the workshop, the six questioning techniques were presented and the 5W1H method was reviewed in detail before breaking out for group exercises. After reviewing two case studies, the team was asked to discuss what questioning techniques were behind the company’s success and how they could apply it at their next meeting. The team developed their own 5W1H questions for real-world scenarios specific to their role, with a question bank provided for inspiration. Post-workshop survey results revealed that the participants benefited from learning new skills that would make a positive impact on their role and the organization.
