Tangents

Most of the questions we ask during general processes aren't asked to get specific answers. As a matter of fact, it usually doesn't matter what the client answers. What matters is that the client is looking at something and learning about it. The specifics might be important to her, but for the facilitator they are immaterial.

The questions in general processes are intended to prompt the client to continue on her own. We want her to go off on a tangent and get into a mode where she is looking and learning all by herself. Asking unusual questions is just a trick to try to accomplish that.

Never interrupt the client when she is looking and learning, even if she isn't quite looking in the place you had in mind. If it is a general process, just encourage her to keep looking, everything is fine. If we were handling a specific issue, and she is looking at something else, let her finish the specific thing she is looking at and then get her back to the subject. Never stop the process of perceiving and realizing.

A client might at first presume that there is a specific significance to the general questions asked, that the precise, correct answers are somehow important to the facilitator. Let her know that it is what SHE is doing that is important, that as long as she is looking at something we are fine. Let her become comfortable about going off on a tangent investigating something interesting.


Never interrupt the process of discovering




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