Question Intelligence™ Essentials
Better Thinking. Better Leadership. Better Results.
The world is becoming more intense. But you don't have to let that run you.
Question Intelligence™ Essentials gives leaders, teams, and coaches a way to think more clearly under pressure, navigate difficult conversations with greater ease, and help others see new possibilities in complexity. Powered by Dr. Marilee Adams’ proven Question Thinking™ methodology and bestselling book, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life.
Under pressure, autopilot takes over faster than we realize.
When pressure is high and perspectives differ, the best answers aren't obvious. It's easy to react too quickly, make assumptions, 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 up-levels how you think, how you help others think, and how you think together.
Think clearly under pressure
Recognize the assumptions and automatic patterns shaping your own experience before they determine what happens next.
- Notice assumptions before treating them as facts.
- Interrupt automatic reactions before they limit your options.
- Recover more quickly when you get triggered or pulled off course.
Help others think better
Strong leadership isn't always having the answer. Sometimes it's creating the conditions for someone else to think more clearly.
- Listen to understand instead of simply preparing your response.
- Listen for the questions, assumptions, and concerns shaping how the other person sees the situation.
- Recognize when you're stepping in too quickly to fix, tell, or advise.
Get better thinking into the room
Complex problems rarely belong to one person. When more thinking enters the room, ideas and solutions surface that no one would have reached alone.
- Surface assumptions before decisions are made.
- Hear perspectives that might otherwise get missed.
- Build real engagement, not just agreement.
Better questions change conversations. Better conversations improve decisions. Better decisions create better results.
Build the skills and capability to lead with clarity instead of reacting to chaos.
This isn't just a work skill. Whether you're leading a team, coaching clients, or navigating your own relationships, it changes how you show up everywhere.
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.”
Question Intelligence™ is the capability to bring greater awareness, curiosity, and intention to how you think, listen, relate, decide, and act.
It draws on Dr. Marilee Adams’ more than 40 years of work in inquiry, including the proven Question Thinking™ methodology and practices that help people move from automatic reaction to greater awareness and choice.
In Question Intelligence™ Essentials, you'll begin developing this capability by learning to recognize the questions and assumptions shaping your experience, shift between Judger and Learner Mindsets, listen with greater curiosity, and use inquiry more intentionally in real situations.
For leaders, that means catching assumptions before they run the conversation, responding with greater intention, and creating conversations where people contribute more of their own thinking.
For coaches, that means listening with greater curiosity, recognizing assumptions and patterns, and using a practical framework to help clients see more possibilities and strengthen their own thinking.
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, get your first look at QDARr™ (Questions → Decisions → Actions → Results), and meet Learner and Judger, the two mindsets the Choice Map™ helps you navigate.
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 goes deeper into the Choice Map™, tracking a sequence that usually runs too fast to catch: 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 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, one where you already think you know what the other person is thinking, and test that assumption.
You'll practice the difference between genuine curiosity and performative questioning, notice what pulls you toward fixing or telling, and learn how and when to share the Choice Map with someone else.
Session 4 brings I, You, and We together, applied to a real conversation, decision, or collaboration you bring into the room.
You'll walk out with a revised Q-Prep™ you can reuse on your own, and a 30-day practice plan you build yourself in this session, so the work continues after the course ends.
Bring what's keeping you up at night.
The conversation you're avoiding. The employee you keep rescuing. The decision you can't quite get clear about. The meeting where everyone seems to agree a little too quickly. 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.
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.”
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.
This is for you if
- You're expected to coach and develop people while still delivering results yourself
- You're carrying too much of the thinking, deciding, or problem-solving for your team
- Important conversations keep stalling, or engagement feels harder to build than it used to
Considering this for your team?
If you're evaluating this for your team, we work differently than we do with individual registrations. For organizations, Question Intelligence can also be delivered to intact teams, leadership cohorts, or integrated into a broader leadership development initiative.
Tell us what you're working with, and we'll help you figure out what it would look like at scale, including what delivery makes sense for your team's size and timeline.
Schedule a CallPrefer email? this address
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.
Your next reaction is still up to you.
Question Intelligence won't make the pressure disappear. It changes your capability to meet it: to notice what's happening inside you, pause before automaticity decides for you, and lead with greater choice.