UK parliamentary hearings often illuminate the skills involved in powerful questioning and in how to respond to questions, powerful or otherwise.

And strong questioning skills incorporate strong listening skills.

You can’t have one without the other.

It’s why I regularly cite parliamentary hearings in my training work for competition agencies, because participants in the training can watch and replay the key interactions to observe the quality of the questions and the quality of the listening.

Yesterday’s interrogation of Boris Johnson by the Privileges Committee was no exception.

In fact it was an exemplar in one area in particular……..

The importance of questioners listening actively to the answer they are being given

and asking a powerful follow-up question that builds on that answer…..

…….and the results when that doesn’t happen!

If you are building skills in this area take a look at a few of the interactions and see what you would have done differently as a questioner:

• What signs were there of active listening?

• Which parts of the answer could/should have been probed further that were not followed up?

• What would have been a more powerful follow-up question?