‘How Do You Feel’?
Good news or bad, triumph or disaster, there is one thing you can guarantee; a lazy reporter shoves a microphone towards their interviewee/victim and asks, ‘How do you feel?’ As often as not they get the supremely unhelpful answer, ‘I’m lost for words.’
My father was fond of saying, ‘Ask a stupid question and you’ll get a stupid answer’. Sadly, he was particularly fond of saying it to me. I did learn from his bluntness, however, that devising a good question is key to getting a great answer.
Michael Parkinson, the doyen of the chat show, was a maestro of the brilliant question. Watch examples of his work and his questions are remarkably deft and to the point. And then Parky does a remarkable thing . . . he actually listens to the answer. His finely-honed questions create the perfect space for his celebrity guests to tell their story.
Indeed, so adept were the great chat show hosts, such as Letterman and Leno, at getting their interviewee to open up, no doubt assisted by green room elixirs, that Carrie Fisher once described chat shows as ‘singles bars for celebrities.’
I use the past tense in the paragraph above because I fear the art of the great question is being lost. I watched an interview the other day and the interviewer spent 22 seconds (which is an interviewing eon) asking their question. And then interrupted the answer after 4 seconds.
It seems that today many questions:
Already assume the answer, or lead the witness in the direction of the desired answer
Frame the question as an either or, leaving only a binary response option
Are seen primarily as opportunities for the interviewer to demonstrate their intelligence and eloquence
Or, perhaps, leading questions are just the jaded default of the interrogator when confronted by yet another shape shifting, dissembling hypocrite politician!
Professor Stuart Firestein has much to offer here. He discusses the process of scientific discovery and suggests the following three stages:
The recognition of what we don’t know
The intelligent curiosity to find the answer
The ability to frame the really good questions to find the answer
From our brand mentoring experience I would add:
Actively listening to the whole answer . . . not just the elements that confirm your original hypothesis
All this means that, in truth, the question can have as much influence as the answer in moving knowledge forward. It’s just that the answer grabs all the plaudits, while the question merely gets a name check, like an executive producer in the opening titles.
Of course, great questions don’t always have great answers, but they can still make great songs. As Bob Dylan observed:
How many times must a man look up
Before he can really see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
