Awkward Questions

I watched a Game of Thrones panel and kind of cringed every time someone would ask a question. It seemed like even for the people who wrote their questions down, there was still a great deal of awkwardness. I suppose this is to be expected, though. It isn't like we're trained well for this kind of thing.

In the great list of Things We should All be Taught, learning how to ask questions should be up there. Asking questions is one of our most basic learning methods, and yet, so many of us suck at it. Learning how to ask the right questions, and the way to ask them is vital to communication. And yet, when most of us ask questions of others, those questions often cause more miscommunication  than serving to advance it.

I think a lot of this is rooted in our fear of rejection. When we ask a question, we are inviting the other person to participate. We are opening ourselves up to their reactions, good or bad. In a lot of ways, this is what causes much of the awkwardness. How do we move past that? We should learn confidence in asking our questions. We should accept that the answers may not come or that they may come in a way we did not wish.

This is a topic I think I'll come back to quite a few times. I have a lot of thoughts on it, but it needs more exploration than I feel I can give it in just one post. In the meantime, I invite you to think about the questions you ask and what results you gain from them. I'll be doing this as well.