A book club member told me my discussion questions were too vague

I was leading our monthly meetup at the public library in Eugene and someone named Linda pulled me aside after. She said my questions made her feel like she had to guess what I wanted to hear instead of sharing her own take. That stung because I thought I was being open-ended. Turns out asking "what did you think about the ending" is super lazy. Now I write three specific questions before each meeting, like "why do you think the author spent 10 pages describing the garden?" It changed how people talk. Last week we had a 40 minute debate about a single character choice. Has anyone else had to rethink how they lead discussion?

2 comments

2 Comments

king.aaron11d ago

Have you found that people react differently to "why" versus "what" questions? In my experience, starting with "what" lets people describe their take before I add my own spin on it. That small shift cut down on the guesswork Linda was talking about, at least for my group.

thompson.tyler11d ago

My buddy Mike tried this with his team last month. He asked "what did you notice about the project timeline?" instead of "why was it late" and people actually opened up about bottlenecks instead of getting defensive. He said one guy even admitted he'd been waiting on a vendor response for two weeks, which never would've come out with a "why" question. Have you seen that play out the same way in your group?