Question Intelligence™ Essentials
Better Thinking. Better Leadership. Better Results.
The world is becoming faster and more intense. But you don't have to let that run you.
Develop Question Intelligence™, a human performance capability you can use to strengthen your thinking, judgment, conversations, decisions, and results.
Through Dr. Marilee Adams’ proven Question Thinking™ methodology, you’ll learn practical ways to recognize assumptions, interrupt automatic reactions, navigate important conversations, and respond with greater curiosity and intention. And in an AI era, that human capability is becoming more consequential.
QI Essentials Is Built On
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
Under pressure, autopilot takes over faster than we realize.
When pressure is high, things are moving fast, and perspectives differ, the best answers aren't always obvious. It's easy to react too quickly, make assumptions, narrow what we can see, or jump in with premature answers.
Left unaddressed, automaticity costs leaders and organizations more than time. Trust and engagement erode. Decisions get made on assumptions nobody checked, and the money and rework to fix them add up fast.
Question Intelligence™ is a human performance capability.
Question Intelligence™ is the capability to strengthen thinking, judgment, conversations, and results through greater awareness and skill with the questions we ask ourselves and others.
Question Thinking™ is the proven methodology for developing it. The Choice Map™ and other Question Thinking tools give you practical ways to notice what is shaping your thinking, interrupt automatic patterns, examine assumptions, ask better questions, and respond with greater curiosity and intention.
These capabilities have always mattered. In an AI era, when answers can be generated faster than ever, the human ability to question assumptions, evaluate what we’re seeing, engage different perspectives, and make sound judgments becomes even more consequential.
Strengthen how you think, engage with others, and work together.
Catch your own thinking first.
Notice your mindset, questions, and assumptions before they shape your conversations, decisions, and actions.
- Stronger thinking before you speak or act.
- Notice assumptions before treating them as facts.
- Shift from automatic reaction toward greater curiosity and choice.
Create better conversations.
Listen, ask, and respond in ways that help both people see more, discover new options, and move the conversation forward.
- More clarity and greater ownership.
- More satisfying, effective conversations.
- Less fixing, telling, or steering toward your answer.
Collaborate and perform better together.
Create the conditions where people can question, disagree, learn, contribute, and make better decisions together.
- More trust, engagement, and innovation.
- Surface assumptions and missing perspectives earlier.
- Better collective judgment, performance, and results.
The questions we ask ourselves and the questions we ask others are the two core dimensions of Question Intelligence. As people strengthen both, better collaboration and collective performance become possible.
Better questions change conversations. Better conversations improve decisions. Better decisions create better results.
Build the capability to respond more intentionally when pressure is high.
This isn't just a work skill.The same capability can help when you're leading a team, coaching a client, making a difficult decision, navigating a relationship, or working with AI.
AI can increase access to intelligence. It doesn’t automatically improve human judgment.
Answers, drafts, and recommendations can now be generated in seconds. What happens next depends even more on the people using them. Being ready for AI takes people who can:
- Frame the right problem
- Recognize assumptions and blind spots
- Ask stronger questions
- Evaluate what comes back
- Notice what’s missing
- Bring in relevant perspectives
- Work through disagreement
- Decide what to trust and act on
Question Intelligence™ sits alongside practical AI skills, domain expertise, governance, and sound processes, strengthening the human judgment each of them relies on.
From automatic to intentional, one live session at a time
Between sessions, you'll notice your patterns in real time, experiment with different questions and responses, and reflect on what changes. That cycle of awareness, practice, and reflection is how Question Intelligence becomes a capability, not just something you understand.
Session 1 slows down the questions already running underneath your thinking, the ones shaping what you notice, what you decide, and what happens next. You'll bring a real conversation or decision into the room and see how the questions beneath a decision shape the actions and results that follow, using QDARr™ (Questions → Decisions → Actions → Results). You'll also meet the two mindsets behind so many of our reactions, Learner and Judger, and the Choice Map™ that helps you move between them.
It's built around one moment: seeing a pattern that's been running you the whole time. Once you see it, you can do something about it.
Session 2 helps you catch a sequence that usually runs too fast to see: pressure, a signal in the body, an automatic reaction, a decision you didn't fully choose. Once you can see it happening, you have somewhere to insert a pause. You'll use the Choice Map™ to track it.
You don't need to eliminate Judger. You need enough awareness to create choice, what we call Switching. You'll leave with your own personal Switching question and Switching strategies you can actually use in the moment it matters.
Asking questions and using questions well aren't the same skill. You'll bring a real conversation or coaching interaction into the room and look at what you may already be assuming about the other person, what you're listening for, and what happens when curiosity is genuine rather than performative.
You'll practice listening, asking, and responding in ways that help both people see more, uncover new options, and move the conversation forward. You'll also notice what pulls you toward fixing, telling, steering, or arriving at your answer too quickly.
Session 4 brings the two core dimensions of Question Intelligence together: the questions you ask yourself and the questions you ask others. You'll apply both to a real conversation, decision, or collaboration you bring into the room and explore how these practices create the conditions for better collective thinking and performance.
You'll walk out with a 30-day practice plan you build during the session and a revised Q-Prep™, a conversation-planning tool you can keep reusing, so the work continues after the course ends.
Bring what's keeping you up at night.
Bring a real conversation, decision, or challenge to every session. The relationship that keeps triggering you. The client who isn't hearing you. The situation where you know you're making assumptions but can't quite see past them.
You'll learn Question Thinking™ by practicing it on situations that already matter to you. The goal isn't simply to understand the methodology.
It's to use it successfully.
This is for you if
- You want to think more clearly and respond more intentionally when pressure is high.
- You lead, coach, advise, or support others and want more satisfying, effective conversations.
- You want practical tools for better decisions, stronger ownership, and more effective collaboration.
- You're helping people adopt new ways of working and want to strengthen the judgment, inquiry, and collaboration those changes require.
Taught live by Dr. Marilee Adams
Marilee is a psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Inquiry Institute. She's the originator of Question Thinking™, the methodology behind Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, now in its Fifth Edition with more than 500,000 copies sold worldwide. She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fielding Graduate University and has spent more than 40 years bringing this work to leaders, coaches, and organizations, including Fortune 500 companies.
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Fifth Edition
Selected readings are woven into the four sessions, so you don't need to finish the book before Session 1. Participants are responsible for purchasing the book before the course begins.
An international bestseller with a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith, it's the same proven Question Thinking™ system this experience is built around, now updated for how we lead and decide today.
Buy on Amazon → Buy on Bookshop.org (Supports Local Bookstores) →“Our complex world demands that we ask different questions, but the power of habit throws us into the Judger Pit. Dr. Adams shows us how to get out of the Judger Pit and stay out, and how to improve our relationships, our work, and our lives with a new mindset that offers more helpful questions.”
“Marilee's writings are by far the most profound articulation of the power of the question that I've come across. It's true: we live in worlds our questions create.”
“When we change our questions, we open our minds and our consciousness expands. This book is a masterful volume designed for those who wish to be fully alive.”
Built on more than 40 years of real-world application
“Learner practices contributed to saving millions of dollars. We now have 94–100% engagement as rated by Gallup, and it's helped us create an Inquiring Organization.”
“QT participants are experiencing career advancement at nearly 2:1 compared to peers who didn't participate. QT totally changed the conversations our leaders create.”
“Since starting my journey with the Choice Map, I've felt a genuine sense of lightness. Realizing I have a choice in how I navigate both internal thoughts and external situations has been empowering. Gaining the tools to more positively influence the people I work and live with has truly lifted my spirits.”
You don’t need another leadership initiative.
Question Intelligence™ strengthens the human capability underneath the work you’re already doing.
Organizations are already investing in AI, manager effectiveness, change, team performance, culture, and leadership development. QI Essentials gives people practical ways to strengthen the thinking, judgment, conversations, and decisions those investments depend on.
Human readiness for AI means people who can recognize the mindsets and blind spots shaping their questions, frame problems well, evaluate what comes back, and work through differences with others.
You can enroll a group in the public cohort, or talk with us about delivering Question Intelligence to an intact team or leadership cohort.
Tell us what you're working on, and we'll help you determine which approach makes the most sense for your people, priorities, size, and timeline.
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Fall 2026 Cohort
Common Questions Answered
Four live 2-hour sessions with Dr. Marilee Adams, recorded if you miss one, short digital learning and reflection between sessions, and Q-Prep™ worksheets for real conversations you're navigating. The required text is purchased separately.
Yes. Every live session is recorded, so a scheduling conflict won't mean missing the material.
Four live 2-hour sessions on Zoom, held every two weeks: Nov 6 & 20, and Dec 4 & 18, 2026, Fridays from 11am–1pm ET / 8–10am PT. Between sessions, plan for about 30 minutes of short digital learning and reflection.
Live on Zoom, every two weeks, with short digital learning and reflection between sessions.
Short digital learning and reflection between sessions, about 15–30 minutes at a time, totaling roughly two hours across the whole course on top of the live sessions themselves.
Cancel for a full refund up to one month before the course begins. After that, your registration can be transferred to another program.
Yes. Pay in full, or split it into 3 payments: 3 × $465 at the early bird rate, or 3 × $535 at the regular rate. Choose your plan right in the pricing section above, no need to email us to set one up.
Yes. Question Intelligence™ Essentials is approved for 10 ICF Continuing Coach Education (CCE) hours. It's designed to complement your existing coaching training, giving you a specific, repeatable framework for the powerful questions your ICF core competencies already point you toward.
Forward this page to whoever approves it; the schedule, pricing, and format are all here. If it would help to talk it through first, this address works for that too.
When pressure is high, the questions you bring to it matter.
Develop the capability behind better thinking, better conversations, better decisions, and better results. Question Intelligence™ Essentials gives you practical ways to notice what is shaping your thinking, shift with greater intention, strengthen your judgment, create better conversations, and collaborate and perform better with others.