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“Is there anything else you would like to address?” You might recognize this question from every doctor’s appointment you’ve ever been to. If you tend not to respond to this question, you’re not alone. Most patients perceive it as a polite way for the doctor to wrap up the appointment rather than an invitation for more discussion.
As it turns out, replacing just one word – “anything” with “something” – makes a significant difference in patient engagement. A study on reducing patients’ unmet concerns found that this simple change led to a 78% reduction in unmet concerns compared to the control group, resulting in better health outcomes.
Why is this relevant to career development? It’s a potent reminder that the words we use when we ask questions matter. Even one word can make all the difference. Questions have the power to ignite curiosity, spark active learning and encourage connection. Good questions lead to better answers. Our goal as practitioners should always be to “ask questions the other person will enjoy answering,” as Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People.
The art of asking questions – a trauma-informed approach
So, how can we as career development practitioners more effectively word our questions to spark and sustain engagement? Over the past decade, trauma-informed care has become a popular approach within specific contexts, namely health care, primary education and foster care. Trauma-informed care is increasing within higher education as a way to better provide access and services to those who have experienced trauma, especially for students within marginalized groups (Henshaw, 2022), and has been integrated into career counselling spaces (Powers & Duys, 2020). By being trauma-informed, a career practitioner can understand that how a client shows up for an appointment or workshop is influenced by past experiences they may know nothing about. Our goal is to provide a service that feels safe, empowering, collaborative and that avoids re-traumatization. Creating trauma-informed services includes ensuring students do not need to disclose vulnerable information to receive the support they need; the design of the service delivery allows clients to feel safe or at ease without disclosure.
“Focusing on the positive rather than the negative makes people more likely to engage.”
In our practice as career advisors, we’ve found trauma-informed positive education (TIPE) offers helpful principles to guide formulating questions. TIPE promotes shifting from a deficiency mindset to a strengths-based approach when teaching in the classroom (Brunzell, Stokes & Waters, 2016). This approach compels us to ask: How can we structure questions to avoid compelling clients to disclose perceived deficiencies? How can we ask questions that create safe and supportive opportunities for clients to highlight their strengths rather than their weaknesses?
Let’s go back to our first example: “Is there anything else you would like to address?” Grammatically, “anything” is often used in negative contexts like “I don’t have anything to wear,” while “something” is used in positive contexts like “Let’s do something fun tonight!” Focusing on the positive rather than the negative makes people more likely to engage. If we are curious to learn more about the unmet concerns of our clients, it might be time to reconsider the words we use when asking them questions.
Here are some practical tips for nurturing a culture of active engagement by asking questions differently.
Putting it into practice
Consider a common question you often pose in your appointments or workshops with clients. For example, “How can I help you?” Reflect on this checklist:
- What am I trying to accomplish with this question?
- Can I frame the question positively or draw on strengths?
- Can I ask it in a way that doesn’t require too much vulnerability or disclosure too soon?
The goal of “How can I help you?” is to clarify what the client wants to discuss. Changing this to “What brings you in today?” or “What is on your mind?” achieves the same goal while feeling more empowering to the client.
We can also make questions feel safer to answer by changing the phrasing in the context of workshops and presentations. Here are some examples of how you could tweak commonly asked questions to emphasize strengths:
- “What questions do you have when it comes to…?” becomes “What would a good workshop on this topic include?”
- “What part of writing a cover letter do you need the most help with?” becomes “What part of the cover letter would you like to focus on today?” Or, to add humour, “What sucks most about writing cover letters?”
- “Do you have any questions?” becomes “What can I clarify?”
You can also de-risk a question by asking divergent and structured questions. A divergent question is one where there are multiple plausible answers: “What are some…?” rather than “What is the…” The latter is a convergently phrased question, meaning it has only one correct answer; that can feel riskier to answer. Moreover, structured questions provide people with the background information they need to confidently formulate an answer. “How can you make this cover letter better?” is an unstructured question, which can be more difficult to answer because it is too open-ended. To improve this question, we could add more context: “What are ways that we can tailor this cover letter to showcase the skills the employer is looking for?”
Asking people questions is a foundational tool for encouraging reflection, exploration and connection. Using trauma-informed and strengths-based approaches to phrasing these questions can significantly impact the type of responses we receive.
So, here is your challenge for this week: Take one question you commonly ask, consider the checklist and experiment with phrasing the question differently in your next appointment or workshop. You may find more willingness, more honesty and more trust.
And while you are at it, as you near the end of your appointment, you may choose to ask your client, “Is there something else you would like to discuss?” See what happens!
