Three kinds of questions

When I teach NLP I get to observe what people find challenging within it. Perhaps top of the list of challenges is how to move from the content of what people are saying to the process, the patterns in how they say it.

People start off with good intentions of sticking with process, then get sucked in by content, and veer off into everyday conversation. The juicier the content, the easier it is to lose sight of the process.Most people live so much in content, the rich details of their stories that even the idea of process eludes them.

I have a set of distinctions I like to give that helps some people to get it. I like to tell people there are three kinds of questions.

The first kind is the normal conversational kind. I ask you a question because I want information about what your life, for me. For example 'Where do you reccomend for lunch?' because I am hungry, or 'How did you make that curry?' because I want to be able to make it too, or 'Then what happened?' because I want to know the next part of the story.

The second kind of questions are asked so that the person answering can get the information. This stems much more from the Socratic tradition of teaching, and so is a common part of coaching.

For example I could ask 'Which of the choices do you prefer?' or 'Can you think of any examples of success in this field?' or 'What haven't you thought of yet?' or 'What would happen if you did?'

I am not invested in the answer, I don't need the information. I am moving from content to process.

The third type of question is asked to direct attention often to create a change of state. These can overlap considerably with the second type of question. '

For example 'Can you remember a time when you felt completely relaxed?' or 'Have you ever had the experience of being really excited or motivated by something?'

The person may give you a detailed answer, or they may just go silent revisiting past memories. Getting the details of where, when and with whom in the answer is not the point. Getting the person to re-experience something that changes their physiology is the real intention.

There are much finer distinction we can make about questions than just these three categories. Recognising and using the distinctions is a big part of NLP. People who are familiar with NLP may notice some overlap between the Meta-model and the Milton-model in the second two types of questions. People familiar with Clean Language will also notice parallels. My aim here is not to go into the details, but give people a broad and easy to grasp frame.

I think that I have covered most of what I wanted to. Naturally I will conclude with some questions, and I do not need to know your answers!

What kind of questions do you tend to use the most? Given your objectives what kind of questions would be the most helpful to you? Finally, what would asking those questions be like?