Last Thursday, I had the privilege to meet my idol Chris Do finally in an AMA exchange in Vancouver! He inspired me to start a design community and begin my journey of creating content to help designers level-up in their careers and hopefully make a dent in the universe.
What I enjoyed the most about the in-person event was the interaction between Chris and the audience as he challenged us to think critically, to think on first principles and not to accept any ideas as facts before carefully examining them and internalizing them as our own thoughts.
I took a few notes from the session with Chris and added my interpretation to it, I am eager to share my biggest takeaway here and I hope you will also find it useful!
Biggest takeaway — Learning how to ask good questions can change your career dramatically
To get to the next level of our careers, we need to find answers to things we don’t know. The best way to do this is to by learning how to ask good questions such that we can get the answers we need.
However, not many people know how to ask good questions, Chris began the session by probing us to think about what are Bad questions vs Good questions and offered us a framework we can follow.
Good questions framework
- ❌ Bad questions are confusing and complex — By fitting too many ideas together, the question became disorientated, it loses focus and makes it hard for the person on the other side to give you a crisps response.
- ✅ Good questions are clear, focused, and simple — There is only one way to interpret it, and you only ask one thing at a time.
- ❌ Bad questions are biased and leading — These are not real questions, they are leading someone to say something the questioner wants. You get answers you want instead of answers you need.
- ✅ Good questions are open and curious — They are generously looking for a solution, they don’t have an agenda, and they are ready to unlearn and learn.
- ❌ Bad questions are irrelevant and offtopic — They don’t consider the expertise and the context the receiver is in, and thus does not help the questioner learn anything meaningful.
- ✅ Good questions are relevant — They consider deeply what the receiver’s expertise is and focused only on that topic. Thus maximizing the opportunity to learn a deep subject from the expert’s wisdom.
- ❌ Bad questions are lame and predictable — These are things that you can figure out on your own, they are repetitive, and they won’t extract any new insights.
- ✅ Good questions are provocative — They make the receiver pause and think because it requires wisdom and depth from the receiver because they might not have thought of it before.
- ❌ Bad questions are binary — These are the Yes/No questions. “Should I do x or not? Yes”. You won’t understand the rationale behind the answer because the question limits how the receiver can respond.
- ✅ Good questions are open-ended. They don’t just want a quick answer, they want to have a conversation. They want to learn the rationale behind a decision.
Good questions tips— Do NOT ask questions with a presumption
A question with a presumption made it hard for you to get a good answer because the receiver may not agree with that statement and it makes them hard to listen to the rest of the question as their mind is preoccupied with that difference.
For example, the following opening of the question is problematic: “The job market is getting more competitive nowadays, how can a designer stand out?”
The receiver may not agree with the statement “The job market is getting more competitive nowadays”. They may think: is the job market only become competitive nowadays, or has it always been competitive?
This kind of opening for questions forces your opinion on someone which is unnecessary to the situation you are in, which is, you only care about the latter part, so why not just say that part? A better question, in this case, would be to rephrase it: How can a designer stand out in a competitive market?
The second biggest takeaway — Don’t overcomplicate selling
Yes, designers, we are all in sales. Whether we like it or not, everything about a designer’s job is about selling.
So how do we sell? The concept is simple — Give them more value in return than they initially spent, and they will happily pay for your service.
For example, if you give me $1, and I can give you back $1.5 worth of value within a reasonable amount of time, it is a great deal! 10 out of 10 people will choose to take that deal.
Also remember: Clients or companies pay you to solve a pain because the cost of not solving the pain is higher than hiring someone to solve it. The same principle applies.
