Be a good detective

Be a good detective

In your professional life, whatever it is, always be curious. When you
meet with someone, think of yourself as a bumbling but friendly private
detective. Ask questions. Then ask follow-up questions. And then let
the answers make you even more curious. Let the answers suggest even
more questions. This will motivate you to higher levels of consciousness
and interest.

When you prepare a meeting with someone, prepare your questions.
Cultivate your curiosity. Don't ever be at a loss for questions to ask.
Most of us do the opposite. We prepare our answers. We rehearse what
we are going to say. We polish our presentation, and strengthen it, not
realizing that our host would much rather talk than listen to us.
If you are in business, you know that when prospective customers
contract for long-term services, they want a company that's truly
interested in them, that understands them, that will be a good consultant
to them. To show a prospect that you are genuinely interested, you must be the
person who asks the most thoughtful questions. To convince a company
that you understand it, you will ask the best follow-up questions—based
on its answers. To convince a company that you will be a good
consultant to them over the course of the contract, you will have
out-learned your competitors by the inventiveness and quantity of your
questions. Your curiosity will get you the business. But you can't just
rely on impulsive, on-the-spot questioning. Being prepared is the secret.
Preparing your questions is even more important than preparing the
presentation of your services.
Indiana's former basketball coach Bobby Knight always said, "The will
to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win." This is not only
useful in business. If you are about to have an important conversation
with your spouse or teenager, it is very useful to prepare your curiosity
rather than your presentation.

When you prepare your curiosity, you always seem to have one more
question to ask before you leave, just like Lt. Columbo from the old TV
show now showing in reruns on cable. As the character played by Peter
Falk, Columbo disarmed his subjects by asking so many seemingly
impromptu questions. Like a disorganized but innocently charming
child, he would ask about the tiniest things. As he prepared to leave, he
always paused at the door, as if absent-mindedly remembering
something he forgot to ask. "Excuse me sir," he would say,
apologetically. "Would it inconvenience you if I asked you one more
question?"
Great relationship-builders ultimately learn that the sale most often goes
to the most interested party and the quantity and quality of your
questions will measure your level of interest. You might be thinking that
this doesn't apply so much to you because you're not in business, or you
don't sell for a living. But heed the words of Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Everybody lives by selling something."

In Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Richard Saul Wurman writes about
physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a
technique that permitted scientists to probe the structure of atoms and
molecules in the 1930s. Rabi attributed his success in physics to the way
his mother used to greet him when he came home from school each day:
"Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?"

By asking questions in your relationships, you are already creating the
relationship, and you are already self-motivated. You don't have to wait
for the other person to make it happen.

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