Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: Why thinking skills matter
- Eight essential thinking skills for successful enquiry answering
- 1 What do they really want? Using your analytical thinking skills to understand the question
- 2 Why remote enquiry handling is different Anticipating problems by thinking empathetically
- 3 Getting started Dealing with the panic by thinking imaginatively
- 4 Smarter searching Developing efficient search strategies by thinking systematically
- 5 Help! Everything's going wrong Using lateral thinking to get out of difficulties
- 6 Success! Now let's add some value Using your creative thinking skills to present your answer well
- 7 Don't just give me another reading list! Using critical thinking skills to add further value to your answer
- 8 Choosing your toolkit Using your predictive thinking skills to determine the resources you'll need
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
1 - What do they really want? Using your analytical thinking skills to understand the question
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction: Why thinking skills matter
- Eight essential thinking skills for successful enquiry answering
- 1 What do they really want? Using your analytical thinking skills to understand the question
- 2 Why remote enquiry handling is different Anticipating problems by thinking empathetically
- 3 Getting started Dealing with the panic by thinking imaginatively
- 4 Smarter searching Developing efficient search strategies by thinking systematically
- 5 Help! Everything's going wrong Using lateral thinking to get out of difficulties
- 6 Success! Now let's add some value Using your creative thinking skills to present your answer well
- 7 Don't just give me another reading list! Using critical thinking skills to add further value to your answer
- 8 Choosing your toolkit Using your predictive thinking skills to determine the resources you'll need
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Picture the scene. You're in the kitchen getting ready for a dinner party and you think your partner has just said: ‘Have you got the time?’ So you could reply: ‘It's ten to eight and the guests are going to be here any moment, so let's get on with it.’ Or you could say: ‘Do you mean what time is it now or how long does it take to cook?’ To which your partner replies patiently: ‘No, darling – did you remember to buy the thyme?’
By simply telling your partner the time you'll have taken the question at face value. But by answering the question with a question you'll have dealt with any potential misunderstanding from the outset – and in this case, misunderstanding there certainly was. The question used in this little domestic drama was a forced choice question – one of several specific question types, each of which can be deployed for a particular purpose. In this instance, it helped to defuse a little bit of potential personal strife. When you use this and other questioning techniques at work, it can save you a deal of trouble from the outset.
You'll deal with many of your enquirers orally, face to face. The possibilities for misunderstandings are endless – accent, articulation, assumptions, all can send you scurrying off in totally the wrong direction, wasting both your time and the enquirer's. But with face-to-face enquiries, you are at least offered lots of clues; most of what we communicate is nonverbal, so you are able to glean what you can from facial expression, eye contact, body language. But you are deprived of these clues when your queries come in by phone, and you have even less to go on when they arrive in written form – by e-mail or text for instance. We'll look at remote enquiry handling in Chapter 2 – but right now, let's assume that the enquirer is standing in front of you. In our journey from what the enquirer asked to what they actually wanted to know, we need to deploy our analytical thinking skills.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Successful Enquiry Answering Every TimeThinking your way from problem to solution, pp. 1 - 26Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2017