Last year, I took an excellent course in group facilitation. Terrence Metz was the instructor for the program, and he taught our class the incredible phrase: “To What Extent.” Now, you may be reading this and thinking, “What’s the big deal?”

I am sharing the phrase because it is helpful when groups meet. Here is an example:

“This idea will cause outages!” the programmer shouts.

“To what extent?” asks his colleague.

“Well,” the programmer shifts in his shoes, ”It happens a lot.” The group decides to get data before they make changes.

Another example:

“There will be huge budgetary discrepancies and we will become unable to operate,” says the chief financial officer.

“To what extent?” the board challenges.

And then the chief financial officer backs down.

“To what extent” is the phrase that pays because it helps team members focus on getting data rather than being reactive and possibly exaggerating consequences.

I encourage you to add the phrase to your information gathering repertoire.

How do you focus on gathering information?