Do you struggle to ask the right questions in conversations that lead to meaningful connection? Most people don’t know how to ask better questions—they either interrogate or say nothing. Patrick King breaks down the 5W1H technique and the psychology of conversations to help you ask questions that actually get people to open up. Learn the social skills that work in any conversation, and build stronger connections by understanding what people really mean.

Behavioral Tells: Read the Hidden Signals Behind Every Action. What People Reveal Without Saying a Word. (How to be More Likable and Charismatic Book 46)

By Patrick King

Behavioral Tells: Read the Hidden Signals Behind Every Action. What People Reveal Without Saying a Word. (How to be More Likable and Charismatic Book 46)

By Patrick King

Hey everyone! If you’re looking to level up your social skills and communication abilities, make sure to check out Patrick King’s insightful videos on how to ask better questions and engage in more meaningful conversations. Whether you’re using the 5W1H technique or diving into the psychology of conversations, Russell Newton joins Patrick to share powerful tips on conversation starters, asking the right questions, and mastering those all-important communication skills. Don’t miss out!

Chapter 12: The Art of Asking the Right Questions
You can tell a lot about somebody by reading:
• Their body language
• Their clothing
• Their voice
• Their posture
• Their accent
• Their gait
• The words they use
• The words they don’t use
• Their facial expressions…
But at some point, you’re going to need to go a little deeper and get more detailed information. And sometimes, the only way to get that information is to come out and ask.
There are a million questions we could ask.
So what’s the best question?
Often, it’s the one that get us the information we want… while appearing on the surface to be completely unrelated.
Let’s take a closer look at how to ask questions that really help you learn the most you can about people.
The Kipling Method
5W1H is a way to ask questions and solve problems, and is meant to help you see ideas and problems from different points of view.
It helps you get to the bottom of a problem and figure out how to fix it. It’s pretty straightforward.
The acronym stands for:
• What
• Where
• When
• Why
• Who
• How
5W1H is also called the Kipling method after the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling, who came up with the idea. Kipling used five W questions in his poem “The Elephant’s Child,” which is the story of an extremely curious elephant who is interested in everything around him.
It may sound obvious, but when reading and analyzing people, we can use the Kipling method to help us structure our efforts to gather information that will help us understand them better. 
What
We often ask “what” to seek things that are and will be. We can use this when we are interested in knowing something specific about a person.
Examples:
• What do you intend to do?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• What pisses you off?
Where
“Where” tries to locate an action or event in three-dimensional space. This can be a simple space, such as on, above, under, or below, or something like a country, a building, a type of location, or even a vague context or environment. When a person answers this kind of question, they are giving you valuable information about how they contextualize and locate certain ideas.
Examples:
• Where did you get that bubbly personality?
• Where did you study?
• Where is this relationship going?
When 
“When” looks for a place in time and can mean two different things-either a point in time that has passed, or one that might still come.
Examples: 
• When will you be finished?
• When should we meet?
• When did you give me the money?
Why
When you ask “why,” you are looking for links between causes and effects. This question word probes for a far more sophisticated depth of understanding. Knowing what someone has done doesn’t always give you insight into their reasons and motivations.
But if you know why people have done something, you can begin to understand the world of meaning they have constructed for themselves in their own heads.
Examples:
• Why did you do that?
• Why did that happen?
• Why is it important for us to try it again?
Who
“Who” brings people into the picture and links them to actions and things. It’s a question that directly asks about the relational human aspects to any situation. The most interesting people in any scenario tend to be the ones who are causing an action, or else deriving a benefit or penalty from that action.
Examples:
• Who is this work for?
• Who will benefit most from what you propose?
• Who else would be interested?
How
“How” is a question that asks for “verbs of process.” In other words, the answer is usually an adverb. Knowing what we know about how adverbs are almost always powerful Word Clues, we can ask how to dig deeper into what has happened or what will happen.
Examples:
• How did you do that?
• How did you get everybody’s attention?
• How are you finding this project?
Though the above might seem elementary, we can sometimes forget that the questions we ask play a major role in the type of information we’re likely to extract from someone.
Example: Let’s imagine that we’re talking to the woman we introduced in the previous section-the one who says, “I married him” rather than “He married me.” Let’s say that, given all your observations, you make a hypothesis about her motivation as a person: You guess that she is very goal-oriented and independent.
So, you ask her some questions and notice that almost all of her answers begin with “I think” or “I feel.” When you ask a how question, she answers with statements about how she achieved something, what she wanted, what she chose, and what she thought of the outcome.
When you ask her a why question, you notice that she doesn’t attribute many outcomes to random chance or the actions of others, but rather to her own actions. Incidentally, you also notice that she appears to quite enjoy being asked questions of this kind and is happy to talk about herself . . .
Bit by bit, your questions mine data that you use to strengthen and refine the working model you have of her. All questions will yield interesting information, but why and how questions tend to be more open-ended and invite more colorful responses. These are the ones most likely to give you an insight into how a person thinks.
On the other hand, pay attention to the kind of questions the person is asking you. When you bear in mind that it’s recurrent patterns that matter and never just a single question, it’s obvious that a person’s question shows you what they’re most interested in.
• Who? This is a person who is interested in relationships and people.
• What? The details matter to them.
• Where, when? They have a more procedural view and want to construct a narrative in a time and place.
• Why? This person is interested in cause and effect, motivations, meaning, and bigger-picture ideas.
• How? As above, but the person is asking for more explanation, detail, and nuance.
The questions a person chooses to ask can tell you what they see as the most important element of a situation. For example:
A: “I got a C minus in math again.”
B: “What?! Who is your teacher?”
Assumptive Questions
Imagine there is an ad in a beauty magazine. The ad copy says:
“Stop wasting money on harsh drying toners” and “We love simplicity as much as you do.”
The ad has made certain forceful assumptions, namely:
• That you are the kind of person who knows what toner is.
• That you actually use toner and spend money on it.
• That you’re dissatisfied with both the expense and harshness of toners.
• That you love simplicity.
While marketers use assumptions like this to artificially create the kind of consumer they want for their product, and generate the sort of desire that results in profit, the same technique can be used to confirm your own hypotheses about people and to sneakily pose a statement as a question.
Consider these examples, which all look like questions, but aren’t.
In order to answer them, you have to accept the hidden assumption within:
• How much do you care? (Assumption: You do care.)
• How will you persuade her? (Assumption: You want to persuade her and are going to do it, it’s possible to persuade her in the first place, and perhaps there are many different ways to do it.)
• Where do you buy your cheese? (Assumption: You buy cheese!)
• What are you avoiding admitting to yourself? (Assumption: There is something you are avoiding, you know what it is, and the person asking the question is entitled to be told all about it.)
Simply by framing a question a certain way, we are implying something about the possibilities for the form the answer will take. The way the other person chooses to respond to these implications can speak volumes.
Example: Let’s imagine you ask the woman in our example, “So what do you think your biggest flaws are?” and you notice that she can’t quite answer the question, or says something like, “I guess people can find my confidence a little intimidating…”
This tells you that the hidden assumption (i.e., that she has flaws) is actually not something she acknowledges-that it is not part of her mental model. But if you had asked outright, “Are you a little arrogant?” you would not have received such a revealing answer!
On the other hand, the questions that people ask you can also reveal their own assumptions, biases, and preconceptions.
Example: Someone asks, “So, was his proposal really romantic?”
They are not just assuming that there was a proposal, they’re conveying a whole world of value judgments and expectations. They are asking you about the thing that they are focused on and value.
Even though they are asking the questions and you are answering, you are actually gleaning information about their values, priorities, and meta-programs! Consider this exchange and see what the question implies about the asker’s values and frame of reference:
A: “I’ve gone vegan. It’s been six months now!”
B: “Oh my God, good on you! Tell me, how much weight have you lost? Do you find your skin is much clearer?”