Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas, Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others. Wiley, 2012.
Referenced in: Leading With Questions
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
For all leaders, but especially for church leaders who depend on the soft currencies of influence over the hard currencies of leverage, the skill of well-placed questions is indispensable. This is also helpful for coaching. This book does more than discuss questioning as a skill, but actually suggests 33 main questions, along with related questions for a total of 337, plus another 295 questions at the end to help with hosting effective meetings, discussing a proposal, connecting personally, understanding another person’s agenda, getting feedback, engaging leadership, engaging employees, evaluating a new idea or proposal, etc. It is exactly what the publisher’s description says, “An arsenal of powerful questions that will transform every conversation.”
Publisher’s Description
An arsenal of powerful questions that will transform every conversation
Skillfully redefine problems. Make an immediate connection with anyone. Rapidly determine if a client is ready to buy. Access the deepest dreams of others. Power Questions sets out a series of strategic questions that will help you win new business and dramatically deepen your professional and personal relationships. The book showcases thirty-five riveting, real conversations with CEOs, billionaires, clients, colleagues, and friends. Each story illustrates the extraordinary power and impact of a thought-provoking, incisive power question. To help readers navigate a variety of professional challenges, over 200 additional, thought-provoking questions are also summarized at the end of the book.
In Power Questions you’ll discover:
- The question that stopped an angry executive in his tracks
- The sales question CEOs expect you to ask versus the questions they want you to ask
- The question that will radically refocus any meeting
- The penetrating question that can transform a friend or colleague’s life
- A simple question that helped restore a marriage
When you use power questions, you magnify your professional and personal influence, create intimate connections with others, and drive to the true heart of the issue every time.
About the Author
Andrew Sobel (www.andrewsobel.com) helps companies and individuals build clients for life. He is the most widely published author in the world on the topic of business relationships, and his bestselling books include Power Questions, All for One, Making Rain, and Clients for Life. All for One was recently voted one of the top 10 sales and marketing books of the decade by a major marketing publication. His clients include many of the world’s leading companies such as Citigroup, Hess, Cognizant, Ernst & Young, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group, and many others. Andrew’s articles and work have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, USA Today, strategy+business, and the Harvard Business Review. He spent 15 years at Gemini Consulting where he was a Senior Vice President and country Chief Executive Officer, and for the last 15 years he has led his own consulting firm, Andrew Sobel Advisors. Andrew has been married for 30 years and has three children. He can be reached at www.andrewsobel.com.
Jerold Panas is executive partner of Jerold Panas, Linzy & Partners, one of the nation’s largest firms specializing in campaign services and financial resource development. A popular lecturer, he is co-founder and chairman of the Institute for Charitable Giving, which specializes in training and coaching professionals in the field.
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