Leading Questions introduce contradiction and
redundancy into communication systems in that they compete with existing ideas
and/or introduce opinions that do not solicit the integration of other ideas.
Instead, leading questions tend to straight-jacket the receiver into either
compliance with the speaker or defiance.
As a ‘red light’ behavior, leading
questions represent a form of communication that is less likely to resolve basic
problems associated with communication and more likely to increase dissonance
within the system. While its true that to some extent all questions tend to
move conversations in particular directions, leading questions do so without
inviting authentic input from the receiver, and without a genuine response
(which is considered ‘green light’ behavior) the leading question becomes
competitive behavior.
An
intervention that can help loosen the vice-grip characteristic of leading
questions is to separate the embedded opinion from the question. For example, a
response other than “yes” or “no” to the leading question “Don’t you think we
should take the toll road instead of the interstate?” might be, “It sounds like
you think we should take the toll road, and you want to know if I agree. Is that
true?" which
could help open the system to integration.
