How to ask great questions

How to ask great questions
How to ask great questions

Parent Post

Questioning is a powerful

Questioning is a powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations. It:

  • Spurs learning and the exchange of ideas.
  • Fuels innovation and performance improvement.
  • Builds rapport and trust among team members.
  • Mitigates business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.

The best responseA conversation

The best response

A conversation is a dance that requires partners to be in sync—it’s a mutual push-and-pull that unfolds over time. 

Just as questions can facilitate the sharing of information—so can the way we answer them. 

Answering questions requires making a choice about where to fall on a continuum between privacy and transparency.

Keeping information private can make us feel free to experiment and learn. 

At the same time, transparency is an essential part of forging meaningful connections. It leads to value-creating deals and helps identify elements that are relatively unimportant to one party but important to the other.

Keeping secrets has its

Keeping secrets has its costs 

Concealing secrets during social interactions leads to the recurrence of secret thoughts, while keeping secrets depletes us cognitively, and harms long-term health and well-being. 

To maximize the benefits of answering questions, it’s important to decide before a conversation begins what information you want to share and what you want to keep private.

Decide what to shareThere

Decide what to share

There is no rule of thumb for how much—or what type—of information, you should disclose. 

Before a conversation takes place, think carefully about whether refusing to answer tough questions would do more harm than good.

Deciding what to keep

Deciding what to keep private

Dodging, or answering a question you wish you had been asked, can be effective not only in helping you protect personal information but also in building a good rapport with your conversational partner.

Another effective strategy is deflecting. Answerers can use this approach to lead the conversation in a different direction.

By asking questions, we

By asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners.

But most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way.

So here’s how you can frame perfect questions and decide what and how much information to share to reap the most benefit from your interactions.

Don’t ask, don’t getPeople

Don’t ask, don’t get

People don’t ask enough questions. This is because they may be:

  • Egocentric—eager to impress others with their own ideas, and not even think to ask questions.
  • Apathetic—they don’t care enough to ask, or they anticipate being bored by the answers they’d hear.
  • Overconfident in their own knowledge and think they already know the answers.
  • Worried that they’ll ask the wrong question and be viewed as rude or incompetent.

The new Socratic methodThe

The new Socratic method

The first step in becoming a better questioner is to ask more questions. The quality of a conversation depends on the type, tone, sequence, framing and frequency of questions.

The best approach for a given situation depends on the goals of the conversationalists, whether the discussion is cooperative or competitive, or some combination of both.

Here are a few tactics.

Favor follow-up questionsNot all

Favor follow-up questions

Not all questions are created equal. Research reveals four types of questions: 

  • Introductory questions (“How are you?”)
  • Mirror questions (“I’m fine. How are you?”)
  • Full-switch questions (ones that change the topic entirely)
  • Follow-up questions (ones that solicit more information)

Follow-up questions seem to have special powers. They signal to your conversation partner that you are listening, and want to know more.

Know when to keep

Know when to keep questions open-ended

No one likes to feel interrogated—and some types of questions can force the responders into a yes-or-no corner. Open-ended questions can counteract that effect and can be particularly useful in uncovering information or learning something new. 

“Closed” questions can introduce bias and manipulation. Of course, open-ended questions aren’t always optimal. 

For example, if you are in a tense negotiation, open-ended questions can leave too much wiggle room, inviting them to dodge or lie. 

In such situations, closed questions work better.

Get the sequence rightThe

Get the sequence right

The optimal order of your questions depends on the circumstances. 

During tense encounters, asking tough questions first can make your conversational partner more willing to open up. 

People tend to reveal sensitive information when questions are asked in a decreasing order of intrusiveness. Of course, if the first question is too sensitive, you run the risk of offending your counterpart. So it’s a delicate balance, to be sure.

But if your goal is to build relationships, the opposite approach—opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly is better.

Use the right tonePeople

Use the right tone

People are more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual way, rather than in a buttoned-up, official tone. 

They also tend to be expressive when given an escape hatch or “out” in a conversation. For example, if they are told that they can change their answers at any point, they tend to open up more. This is why brainstorming sessions are so productive. 

Of course, sometimes an off-the-cuff approach is inappropriate. But in general, an overly formal tone is likely to inhibit people’s willingness to share information.

Pay attention to group

Pay attention to group dynamics

Conversational dynamics can change profoundly depending on whether you’re chatting one-on-one with someone or talking in a group. 

Not only is the willingness to answer questions affected simply by the presence of others, but members of a group tend to follow one another’s lead.

Participants in a conversation enjoy being asked questions and tend to like the asker more than the answerer. 

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