For 30 years this question has stayed with me, making me laugh and making me think. So how has such a few simple words strung together been able to stick in my head and pop up at various moments to have me wonder once again about the answer?

As you can see the words themselves are nothing special but it is the fact that they are put together in the form of a question, a question that requires thought, a question that challenges my understanding.

Of course there are many questions that I have been asked in my life that have had little or no impact and have been long forgotten so it would be safe to say that the questions that have the greatest influence are special in some way.

They don’t require fancy words but somehow they cut to the heart of a situation and have us think again about who we are, what we are doing and why we are doing it.

In coaching we call these ‘powerful’ questions. They have us and our clients dig deeper into circumstances and ourselves to seek a new level of answers, ones that have not appeared before.

As with any system that is closed, if there is no new information that appears within it then the outcomes constantly remain the same. And if these outcomes are not what you want then you’re stuck going round in circles. Not very nice but its exactly what we tend to do until we are inspired to think differently, and that is where the powerful question is needed.

Leaders need to be able to access these powerful questions to create opportunity for those around them to raise their thinking and being. But there is not a simple list we can go to find which powerful question would be most appropriate for a particular scenario, however these questions are all around us. We know them instinctively because they make us stop and think, they land on us in a way that cannot be ignored and they change the possibilities.

So be a seeker and a user of powerful questions because to change and grow we need to discover new information, which requires us to challenge our old thinking habits.

Your comments are welcome along with your powerful questions. I also would love to hear your answers to the original question ‘What is the difference between a duck?’