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I love to ask questions. I always have. My parents told me that when I was little, my questions were not so much as a generalized “Why?” but more so a specific “Why are the leaves falling to the ground?”
Asking questions is an excellent way to learn something new. Conversely, I also love to teach people things they don’t know by answering their questions; especially when I actually know the answer. Receiving and sharing knowledge by asking and answering questions can be one of the easiest ways to exercise your mind on a daily basis. However, there are certain social ‘rules’ which one should follow when asking and answering questions.
Rule #1: When you ask a question, listen to the answer. This sounds like an easy thing to do because, after all, you wouldn’t have asked the question if you weren’t interested in the answer, right? But maybe you were only partially interested in a one-sentence answer and your ‘teacher’ memorized the Wikipedia site on this subject and is delivering a long-winded sermon. But since you asked the question, you should be polite and listen … or at least pretend to listen by interjecting appropriate reactions such as “Really?” or “How interesting. I did not know that.”
Of course, this also leads into my first rule of answering a question: Keep it relatively short. Most people (myself included) do not have a willingness to receive so much information when asking a question without a notepad and pen handy. If you want to teach your asker about something, answer a little bit at a time. If your asker wants to know more, they will simply ask another question! This brings me to …
Rule #2: Ask questions one at a time. If you ask a question and don’t wait for an answer before asking another question, you not only confuse the answerer, but you also send a signal that you will not listen to an answer which may be longer than a short “Yes” or “No”. When this happens, the answerer becomes overwhelmed at which question to answer first and may simply reply with a “I don’t know”. If the asker does ask two or three questions in a row, I would encourage the answerer to ignore the follow-up questions and focus on the initial ask.
Rule #3: When asking a question in a group setting, make sure you don’t ask it to one person specifically. This way, you don’t embarrass someone by making them feel stupid and you allow the person who knows the answer to feel even smarter by providing an answer for all to hear. Likewise, if you are the one to answer a question which is posed to a group, don’t be preachy in your answer. This will make you look like a know-it-all and people won’t ask you things anymore.
When a 3-year-old asks “Why?” it is easy to answer with a “Because the earth is round” response. But when a 40-year-old asks “Why?” You must adjust your answer accordingly. This leads me to my final Rule #4: For both the asker and the answerer…Know your audience!
Answer. Answer.
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!
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