When trying to change someone's mind, it can be tempting to ask questions in a combative way, hoping to catch someone, trap them, or corner them into seeing your way of thinking. If you've ever seen an animal backed into a corner, you can imagine what this does to our primal survival brain. We hiss, we claw, and we bite our way into comfortable safety.
Since people rarely learn or reflect meaningfully when they feel threatened, we must take a different approach:
The goal of questioning, then, must be to invite your conversational partner to reexamine their own thinking and logic and come to realizations on their own.
We can do this by:
Asking open-ended questions.
Getting clarification to better understand.
Understanding that feelings are real.
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