Would you like to learn a skill to take your day-to-day conversations deeper? When our conversations get deeper we can more deeply connect with others, understand what drives them to do the things they do, and if you are a coach (formally or informally) it will greatly increase the probability that your conversations will be transformational.
If you’d like to take your conversations deeper the number one skill you can develop is the Neuro-Semantic skill of meta-questioning.
Want to learn what this skill is and how to use it?
In today’s article I share practical examples of meta-questions that you can bring to your conversations, personally and professionally, to more deeply understand, connect, and ethically influence others (and of course yourself)!
Categories of Consciousness
We have over 110 categories of meta-questions in the field of Neuro-Semantics and so of course I will not be sharing all of those in this article.
In this article I will introduce a few core examples of meta-questions that you can easily introduce into your daily conversations and of course you can start to expand your repertoire as you get these key categories under your belt.
One of the master level skills of meta questions is to learn to hear these ‘categories of meta-questions’ in daily communications, so ultimately you won’t have to memorize the list of 110.
With time, training, and practice you’ll start to detect them in your conversations so you will have an idea about what categories of consciousness people default to naturally and you can ask them questions to their habituated categories.
Basic Examples of Meta-Questions
The Category of Intentions
- What is your intention behind X?
- What was your driving intention behind X?
The Category of Motivation
- What is your motivation driving X?
- What was your motivation behind X?
The Category of Values
- What are your values behind X?
- What is important to you about X?
The Category of Thoughts
- What do you think about X?
- What are your thoughts around X?
The Category of Belief
- What do you believe about X?
- What beliefs are driving you to X?
The Category of Decisions
- What have you decided about X?
- What decision is driving you to X?
We’ve covered quite a few examples of meta-questions here and so I encourage you to pick one or two of those categories and see if you can intentionally bring them into your day to day conversations this week.
You can ask them to yourself to get to know yourself better and what is driving your emotions, behaviors and habits. You can ask them to others to get to understand them more deeply and to uncover what is driving their emotions and responses. And of course you can use this questioning skill in your coaching conversations to take your conversations deeper and increase the probability of your conversations being transformational.
If you’re interested in going deeper, you can sign up for my course on Meta-Questioning: Developing Deep Questioning Skills for Coaches, Communicators & Leaders.
I hope you’re walking away from this article with some examples of meta-questions but more important than head knowledge is getting hands on experience using these meta-questions intentionally.
Feel free to share your questions and comments here!
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