Inquisitive and insightful questions to achieve goals
- These questions can help with moving us towards our goals and achieving them.
- I should pose these questions to different areas in my life that I want to improve. e.g. exercise plans, quitting bad habits, etc.
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- What Does Success Look Like To You? _
- What Is The Outcome You Want? _
- What Do You Want To Be Different In Three To Five Years? _
- What Are The Obstacles You’re Facing? _
- What Can You Control? _
- Tell Me More _
- What Are The Options You’ve Come Up With? _
What Does Success Look Like To You?
Or, what are your goals?
This question can be adapted for big-picture scenarios or specific situations.
Asking what success looks like can refer to long-term goals and planning. However, when applied to a specific situation, it can help determine what the immediate priorities are for a project or situation.
What Is The Outcome You Want?
This question is effective for situations where there is more than one equally viable solution or course of action. When you start with the specific outcome you want, the best action to take becomes clearer. For example, if you’re having a conflict with a team member, the best solution will be different if you want to try to repair the relationship versus if you think it’s hopeless and just want to get away from that person.
“If we are facing a really complicated situation, this is often the best question we can ask to help ourselves lift our heads up and start to look at the situation from an entirely new angle.
What Do You Want To Be Different In Three To Five Years?
This question focuses on a long-term outcome while focusing in on areas that may require growth or change. Things around us change at a very fast pace. Focusing on a shorter window—perhaps three years—still allows enough time for creative, aspirational thinking without the distraction of how different the workplace might be at that time. The answers may reveal how we want to grow, or fundamental changes we need to make in order to achieve our goals.
What Are The Obstacles You’re Facing?
Sometimes, we may be reluctant to share the challenges we are facing, or may not have really thought them through. Asking about them outright allows us to explore the challenges with which we are struggling, and also examine our own strengths and weaknesses in addressing them.
Most of us know where we are weaker, and yet we haven’t been able to address it. Identifying what the obstacles are is a really great place to start.
What Can You Control?
This question shifts the focus from ruminating about factors that are beyond our control and onto what we can actually do about the situation. We might not be able to change an unfair corporate policy immediately, but we may be able to find short-term answers to help us deal with it while we work on longer-term solutions.
What Are The Options You’ve Come Up With?
When faced with obstacles or challenges, we need to have some idea of how we will address them. Even if we are struggling with what the right answers are, having at least a few ideas ensures that we have given the matter some thought and we are not just relying on others for answers.
Facilitate thoughts and conversations where we can discover the answer to this question in a safe space, and we can walk away with and own the solution. Other people can help fill in gaps or, trigger another thought [or] chain of thought.
Tell Me More
There are typically three versions of every story—your story, their story, and the truth.
This statement prompts us for more details about what is leading us to form our opinions or helping us reach a conclusion. That can help reveal biases or blind spots that are affecting our judgment. With the benefit of some objectivity and another degree of separation from the situation, we can help ourselves expand our thinking and possibly find new ways of looking at a situation.