5/9/2023 Meeting Notes: Moderated Skills-building - How to ask authentic, respectful, thought-provoking questions

Members of the Fairfax County Alliance participated in a moderated skills-building session focused on how to ask authentic, respectful and thought-provoking questions; that is, generating questions of understanding rather than ‘gotcha’ questions.

Our moderators were Trista Schoonmaker, Rebecca Cataldi and Kitty Monroe.

After each of us drafted a statement of belief on a topic of our choice, we practiced forming questions in response to those statements and critiqued each other’s efforts.

The ’statements of belief’ took various forms. Here are some examples:

“I believe that political self-government depends entirely on individual self-government (in the ethical sense). So, the less we govern ourselves individually – our behaviors toward each other in particular – the stronger the government will have to be to maintain civil society.”

“I am not against hunting or the defense of one’s home, but I don’t think that obtaining weapons for someone’s home arsenal should be made easy, including semi-automatics or other weapons of war.”

“I believe the protection of religious expression - for all religions - is fundamental to preserving freedom.”

Other topics touched on the role of government across a range of issues (individual well-being, climate change, ‘green’ energy choices), whether or not to means-test social welfare programs, and the importance of local politics (fix potholes!).

Using a rubric (“Qualities of Good Questions”) attached to this email, we broke into smaller groups, drafted questions in response to a few statements, and critiqued each other’s questions. The exercise forced us to focus on crafting a question rather than responding to an 

issue itself. We then shared our findings with the larger group.

Lessons learned:

• We sometimes fail to recognize we are asking a polarizing question, no matter howcarefully we try to express it.
• The assumptions embedded in our statements and questions are often hard for us to recognize.
• Simpler questions often elicit more insight into the other person’s thinking thanquestions that are framed by too much information about our own view of the matter.
• What is it we’re really trying to get out of a question or a conversation? Am I truly seeking to understand the other person’s viewpoint, or am I subtly trying to convince them of mine?
• “Tell me more” is an easy follow-up question when you may not fully understand what’s being conveyed.
• Authenticity is fundamental to honest engagement.
• Seek first to understand, before you try to be understood.
• Word choices can carry unintended connotations for someone with a different view of the issue.
• A genuine curiosity and desire to learn what the other person believes goes a long way toward creating productive discourse.
• The exercise illustrated once again the need to pause and reconsider our individual approaches in this era of fast-paced flows of information and opinion.

For more information, consider exploring the resources on the Braver Angels website and joining future Braver Angels workshops and debates.