Concept
Deep Questions
A deep question, in Charles Duhigg's Supercommunicators, is a question about someone's values, beliefs, feelings or experiences rather than about facts, such as 'What do you enjoy about this work?' instead of 'What do you do?' It is the main way into the emotional conversation.
Duhigg contrasts shallow questions, which ask for information, with deep ones, which invite a person to say something about themselves. A deep question need not be intimate; at work it can be as simple as asking which part of a project matters most to someone, or what worries them about a plan. Two conditions make it work. The asker listens to the answer and shows it was heard, and then reciprocates with something of their own at the same depth, so the exchange does not feel like an interrogation. Research outside the book, by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, found that people expect deeper conversations with strangers to be more awkward than they turn out to be, which suggests the fear of such questions is a bigger barrier than the questions themselves.
A real-life example
A project lead at a construction firm in Gaziantep adds one question to his weekly call with a site engineer: which part of the site does she actually enjoy? She talks about drainage problems nobody else wants, and he admits he misses site work himself. Their calls stop sounding like status reports.
How to use it
- 1Turn one fact question into a value question: from 'What do you do?' to 'What do you like about what you do?'
- 2Show you heard the answer with one specific detail before you move on.
- 3Offer something of your own at the same depth, so the question becomes an exchange.