Consider these two types of questions when it comes to talking with your colleagues, employees, managers, friends, and more. Each type of question has a very different impact on how our brains respond!
Invite Curiosity Questions:
- Open ended. Starts with “What” and sometimes “How?”
- Releases dopamine and other “happy” neurochemicals.
- Helps keep the brain in a flow-flourish state (Blue Zone).
- Invites the brain to find new answers that might not have been there before or were buried and had not come to the surface.
- When “new dots are connected,” insights come and an upward spiral begins.
Avoid Quiz Questions:
- Close-ended. Start with “Why” “Can” “Will” “Do” “Have you?”
- Releases stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin.
- Helps put the brain in a fight-flight state (Red Zone).
- There is a race in the brain to find the “right” answer, and if he/she doesn’t, there is a subtle or overt sense of failure or worry about being “less than” all the other people who supposedly have figured it out already.
- The downward spiral deepens.
