<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Only that sometimes we work and work and work over a question that is beautiful and profound and makes everyone say “AHHHH!” but in reality stands alone as a thing of beauty and somehow never seems to kick of the conversation and leave space for the participants to get to work. Sometimes the best question is “what should we do together now?”<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Chris</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 19, 2015, at 10:49 AM, christine koehler <<a href="mailto:chris.alice.koehler@gmail.com" class="">chris.alice.koehler@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="">Chris,</div><div class=""> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word" class=""><div class="">In my experience, “powerful questions” are more about me as the questioner than my trust in the group’s ability to find surprising meaning in conversation.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Love it ! but after reading your comment twice, I am not sure to understand what you mean</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Do you mean that powerful questions have the ability to build meaning in conversation, that the questioner may find surprising ? Does it mean that you can only say afterwards that the question was powerful ?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This makes sense to me, as you never know what impact will have your words. As many of you I guess, I recall occasions where I people told me "this particular sentence - then something follows that you forget you said or that you find completely common,or truism, - you said had a strong influence in my life". mmmmmm. be prepared to be surprised . </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I must admit that I speak from a position where I find extremely difficult to frame (or to help frame) powerful questions. There are so many "resistance" around questions, that sometimes a group will just reject a formulation during prework and then accept it as something obvious when preparing the set-up or that sometimes the group doesn't care, no matter how cumbersome the question is framed, they will anyhow discuss the important issues. </div><div class="">so I stick to easy criteria : open question (no assumptions) , very short, can be interpreted in many many different ways, and that may lead to a quantity of solutions, not a single one. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Would love to hear what other thinks about framing questions</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Christine </div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div>
</div></div>
</div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>