Incisive Questions™

by Nancy Kline 5/21/2008 11:36:00 AM

Advisors who know how to generate Incisive Questions™ to free their client’s mind from untrue limiting assumptions hold a key to creating the best plan.

Incisive Questions™

What happens when the mind breaks through?
What steps has it taken so quickly that we do not see the steps?

Simply put, this break-through process is the mind asking itself an Incisive Question.

Here is how it seems to work:

Our thinking, feeling, decision-making and action are driven by assumptions. The good ideas and feelings come from true liberating assumptions. The bad ones come from untrue limiting assumptions.

So, to breakthrough from bad to good, the mind seems to go through roughly this sequence of questions:

  1. What am I assuming that is limiting my thinking here?
  2. What am I assuming that is most limiting my thinking here?
  3. Is that assumption true?
  4. What is a liberating true alternative to the limiting assumption?
  5. If I knew (insert true alternative), what would I think or feel or do?

On paper this sounds pretty dry. But in practice it is one of the most scintillating and transformative things human beings do. The mind does it for itself in a flash when it can. When it can’t, it does it a bit more slowly, but just as powerfully, with the help of those five questions and extraordinary attention from another person.

For example, if your goal js to restructure your time, the first question is: What are you assuming that is stopping you from re-structuring your time? You find as many assumptions as you can. Then with questions 2 and 3, you find the key untrue assumption. Then through questions 4 and 5, you build an Incisive Question. And voila, your mind breaks through. A new, true, liberating reality emerges.

 

Begin to listen for the untrue limiting assumptions your clients are making as they speak. And construct an Incisive Question for them that will free them from it. Asked gently, an Incisive Question will open your clients’ minds and their hearts.

 

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9/2/2010 9:07:02 PM

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This blog will help you think better and present ways that you can help others think better. It’s about a methodology I created, teach, and documented in my book, Time To Think. The quality of everything people do depends on the thinking we do first. Therefore, creating a “Thinking Environment” is the first responsibility of leadership. The Time To Think methods are used at Time Warner, Pfizer, Shell, The BBC, The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, and many other organizations. This blog provides information about the 10 behaviors necessary to create a Thinking Environment, our coaching services and other programs, and is part of an effort to help make the world better.

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Nancy KlineNancy Kline
President, Time To Think

Nancy Kline is creator of Time To Think, a process that increases quality of thinking and results in all human interactions. The author of a book about her methodology, Ms. Kline also runs an international leadership development and coaching company….(more)

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