My Review of "Ask More"

Description

A torrential storm catches you on your way to meet me at the local coffee house. Luckily, I’ve just finished reading Frank Sesno’s 2017 book Ask More, and I can tell you about it to help fill the long, rainy afternoon.

I’ll tell you about what the book is about, and I can try to help you decide whether it’s worth your time.

Credits

Mixed bag of artists this time around. I’m excited that I finally have a place to regularly use and share “Cut My Hair”. Don’t do drugs, kids.

Songs in order of appearance:

• “Game Over” by Bknapp
• “Rainy Streets” by DOMINANT
• “Outro (Love Makes Problems Disappear)” by Mounika.
• “Large Americano” by .anxious.
• “Cut My Hair (feat. Cavetown)” by Mounika.

Text Notes

More specifically, the full title is, “Ask More: The power of questions to open doors, uncover solutions, and spark change.” By Frank Sesno. Sesno is a former CNN correspondent who has interviewed, that is, asked questions of, many highly important people in the last few decades, so he knows his questions.

My goal with this review is to give you an idea of what the book is about, and to let you know if this is a book that is worth reading for you.

First, what’s between the covers? The content is organized in a very straightforward way, with Sesno providing examples for 11 different question types:

1. Diagnostic, questions that help to figure out what the problem is. What is the root cause of this dead battery?
2. Strategic, questions that explore the entire picture and plan for a big decision. What are the consequences of taking this job offer?
3. Empathetic, getting to the feelings and emotions of another. How does that make you feel?
4. Bridging, questions that build rapport and connect you to wary, distant, or hostile people. He makes you furious?
5. Confrontational, questions that accuse or call someone out. Were you or were you not eating carbs after 8pm last night?
6. Creativity, questions that encourage originality, dreaming, and risk-taking. Imagine it’s the end of the project, not the beginning. What does it look like?
7. Missional, questions that invite others to a shared purpose or common goal. How can we help stop cancer in youth?
8. Scientific, questions that test reality using data, experimentation, and fact. What are ways I can test to see if this car is worth purchasing?
9. Interview, questions that take place in an interview. These questions peer into the future and determine whether a job match and culture match can be found. What do your opponents say about you?
10. Entertaining, questions that you can use as a host spice up the dinner conversation. If you could go anywhere in the world just for tonight to have dinner, where would you go? What would you eat?
11. Legacy, questions that ask about what you’ve done with life. What’s one story you would like me to tell my grandchildren about you?

Each question type gets its own chapter, and each chapter contains these three primary ingredients.

1. Example questions that correspond to each type. No surprise there, but it was a pleasant surprise to see all the different ways a certain domain can be attacked with questions. For example, diagnostic questions are not just about asking “What is the problem?” but also “How do we know? What are we not seeing? What can we do?”
2. Stories of how the question type has been used by others. It was interesting to get to hear the experiences of a minister who asks legacy questions to patients on their death beds, and many other stories.
3. My favorite part, ways to listen once the question has been asked. When the answers start coming, what do we listen for? How do we follow up? This aspect is addressed for each type.

Some chapters contain more or less of these elements, as appropriate for the topic. For example, much more time is given to exploring how to listen when asking empathetic questions.

So that’s what you’re getting. I should also add what you’re NOT getting. You’re not getting these three ingredients in some well structured order. There’s no list of bulleted questions followed by story time, followed by a section on how to listen. No, they’re all mixed in with each other, switching from one to another from sentence to sentence. This can make a given chapter feel a little disorganized, despite a well-organized book as a whole.

Ok, based on that, for whom is this book worth reading, or not worth reading? I’ll say right of the bat that the content of the book is useful for just about everyone. Maybe every single sentence or chapter won’t pertain to you. But, due to the huge scope of the book, covering many aspects of questioning, you’re guaranteed to find something to take home with you. And there’s a little more to it than that, so let’s get into some specific recommendations and warnings.

If you’re someone who likes to mark up your books, you’ll have fun with this one. Due to the scattered nature of each chapter, it’s a really good book to take a pen to. Because there’s a lot to hit and a lot to skip, it’ll be a rewarding highlighting experience for you. Your book will look very involved at the end, a highlight here, a highlight there. I always find that super satisfying. I’d even say it’s important to mark this book up. There is a firehose of content to drink from, some of which you’ll want to come back to, and some of which is less important. You may not be planning to interview to fill a position now, but you might in the next 20 years, and then you’ll be glad you are able to quickly find those questions and notes on how to listen to interviewees.

f you’re someone who enjoys stories about discovery and learning, you’ll enjoy these pages filled with stories of great questioners. The Mexican reporter who asked Confrontational questions of Donald Trump. The government interrogator who uses bridging questions to get a confession from a tight-lipped criminal. It’s fun stuff, though you gotta remember that it’s mixed in with example questions and principles.

That said, f you really need organized structure as you read, with clear direction and movement from point A to point B, you may not enjoy reading this one as much. But fear not! One of my favorite things about Ask More is that a final chapter of review is included. Each question type gets a couple pages or more, each covered with a shotgun blast of example questions, brief reminders to important stories, and ways to listen. It’s incredibly useful to remind yourself at the end of where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. It’s so useful in fact, that I daresay it might make the rest of the book obsolete. There’s no deep science to asking questions, and no such science is explored in the book’s chapters. The only thing the chapters give that the review page doesn’t is more background info on each question type, and detailed stories of how the questions are used. But even the stories aren’t anything surprising. In the Mission Questions chapter, a doctor fighting disease uses mission questions to rally others to the cause. In the Entertainment Questions chapter, an Italian-American couple hosts the author and some other friends for dinner and ask wonderful Entertainment questions. Except, all the questions that they ask are in one-sentence form in the review chapter.

So, the review chapter is where it’s at. I’d happily recommend that one chapter to anyone who happens to get their hands on this book, even if the idea of disorganized chapters kind of puts you off, as it does me. It’s a great resource to whip out when you know you’ll be engaging in a certain type of questioning soon, or just to review so that you have more questions in your day-to-day arsenal.

In short, this book has something for everyone. The only question is, are you someone for whom diving into its pages will be a fulfilling and enjoyable experience? Or are you someone who will get as much or more from the final review chapter as from the rest of the book? Only you can answer that.

And that’s it! A pretty straightforward review for a pretty straightforward book. And now I want to ask of you, listener. How did I do in answering my goals of explaining what the book is about and who it’s for? Is there anything I should add for future reviews? I plan to do these as often as I complete books now, so I’m interested in making them as valuable and worth your time as possible. You can reach out to me IRL or visit my website, joshuakoh.me/contact. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening!