Leading Questions

 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.