Much of our workday is spent asking others for information - requesting status updates or questioning a colleague in a negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few of us think of questioning as a skill that can be honed - or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.
That’s a missed opportunity. Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
For some people, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question on the tip of their tongue. But most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way
The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners - a virtuous cycle.
“We live in the world our questions create” – David Cooperrider
In this blog I’ll draw on insights from behavioural science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. Offering guidance for choosing the best type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the most benefit from our interactions, not just for ourselves but for our organisations.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Get
“Be a good listener,” Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” More than 80 years later, most people still fail to heed Carnegie’s sage advice. People don’t ask enough questions. In fact, among the most common complaints people make after having a conversation, such as an interview, a first date, or a work meeting, is “I wish [s/he] had asked me more questions” and “I can’t believe [s/he] didn’t ask me any questions.”
Why do so many of us hold back? There are many reasons. People may be egocentric - eager to impress others with their own thoughts, stories, and ideas (and not even think to ask questions). Perhaps they are apathetic - they don’t care enough to ask, or they anticipate being bored by the answers they’d hear. They may be overconfident in their own knowledge and think they already know the answers (which sometimes they do, but usually not). Or perhaps they worry that they’ll ask the wrong question and be viewed as rude or incompetent. But the biggest inhibitor, is that most people just don’t understand how beneficial good questioning can be. If they did, they would end far fewer sentences with a period - and more with a question mark.
Dating back to the 1970s, research suggests that people have conversations to accomplish some combination of two major goals: information exchange (learning) and impression management (liking). Recent research shows that asking questions achieves both.
Questions are such powerful tools that they can be beneficial - perhaps particularly so - in circumstances when question asking goes against social norms. For instance, prevailing norms tell us that job candidates are expected to answer questions during interviews. But research by Dan Cable, at the London Business School, and Virginia Kay, at the University of North Carolina, suggests that most people excessively self- promote during job interviews. And when interviewees focus on selling themselves, they are likely to forget to ask questions - about the interviewer, the organization, the work - that would make the interviewer feel more engaged and more apt to view the candidate favourably and could help the candidate predict whether the job would provide satisfying work. For job candidates, asking questions such as “What am I not asking you that I should?” can signal competence, build rapport, and unlock key pieces of information about the position.
Most people don’t grasp that asking questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. The first step in becoming a better questioner is simply to ask more questions. Of course, the sheer number of questions is not the only factor that influences the quality of a conversation: The type, tone, sequence, and framing also matter.
Research suggests several approaches that can enhance the power and efficacy of queries. The best approach for a given situation depends on the goals of the conversationalists—specifically, whether the discussion is cooperative (for example, to build a relationship or accomplish a task) or competitive (seeking to uncover sensitive information or serve their own interests), or some combination of both.
“He who asks a question remains a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask remains a fool forever” – Chinese Proverb
Favour follow-up questions.
Not all questions are created equal. Research, using human coding and machine learning, revealed 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).
Although each type is abundant in natural conversation, follow- up questions seem to have special power.
They signal to your conversation partner that you are listening, care, and want to know more. People interacting with someone who asks lots of follow-up questions tend to feel respected and heard. An unexpected benefit of follow-up questions is that they don’t require much thought or preparation. In studies, the people who were told to ask more questions used more follow-up questions than any other type without being instructed to do so.
“Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right question.”
Know when to keep questions open- ended.
No one likes to feel interrogated—and some types of questions can force answerers into a yes-or-no corner. Open-ended questions can counteract that effect and thus can be particularly useful in uncovering information or learning something new. Indeed, they are wellsprings of innovation—which is often the result of finding the hidden, unexpected answer that no one has thought of before.
Of course, open-ended questions aren’t always optimal. For example, if you are in a tense negotiation or are dealing with people who tend to keep their cards close to their chest, open-ended questions can leave too much wiggle room, inviting them to dodge or lie by omission.
In such situations, closed questions work better, especially if they are framed correctly. For example, research by the University of Utah indicates that people are less likely to lie if questioners make pessimistic assumptions (“This business will need some new equipment soon, correct?”) rather than optimistic ones (“The equipment is in good working order, right?”).
Get the sequence right.
The optimal order of your questions depends on the circumstances. During tense encounters, asking tough questions first, even if it feels socially awkward to do so, can make your conversational partner more willing to open up. Leslie and her coauthors found that people are more willing to reveal sensitive information when questions are asked in a decreasing order of intrusiveness. When a question asker begins with a highly sensitive question subsequent questions, feel, by comparison, less intrusive, and thus we tend to be more forthcoming. 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.
If the goal is to build relationships, the opposite approach - opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly - seems to be most effective.
“Good questions inform, great questions transform” – Ken Coleman
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. In a meeting or group setting, it takes only a few closed-off people for questions to lose their probing power. The opposite is true, too. As soon as one person starts to open up, the rest of the group is likely to follow suit.
Group dynamics can also affect how a question asker is perceived. Research reveals that participants in a conversation enjoy being asked questions and tend to like the people asking questions more than those who answer them. But when third-party observers watch the same conversation unfold, they prefer the person who answers questions. This makes sense: People who mostly ask questions tend to disclose very little about themselves or their thoughts. To those listening to a conversation, question askers may come across as defensive, evasive, or invisible, while those answering seem more fascinating, present, or memorable.
“Telling creates resistance. Asking creates relationships.” – Andrew Sobel
The Best Response
The way we ask questions can facilitate trust and the sharing of information—so, too, can the way we answer them. Answering questions requires making a choice about where to fall on a continuum between privacy and transparency.
Should we answer the question? If we answer, how forthcoming should we be? What should we do when asked a question that, if answered truthfully, might reveal a less-than-glamorous fact or put us in a disadvantaged strategic position? Each end of the spectrum - fully opaque and fully transparent - has benefits and pitfalls.
Keeping information private can make us feel free to experiment and learn. In negotiations, withholding sensitive information (such as the fact that your alternatives are weak) can help you secure better outcomes. At the same time, transparency is an essential part of forging meaningful connections. Even in a negotiation context, transparency can lead to value-creating deals; by sharing information, participants can identify elements that are relatively unimportant to one party but important to the other - the foundation of a win-win outcome.
In an organisational context, people too often err on the side of privacy and under-appreciate the benefits of transparency. At time of new team creation and finding solutions or compromises, transparency and sharing of information are imperative to creating the trust that is needed.
CONCLUSION
“Question everything” Albert Einstein famously said. Personal creativity and innovation rely on a willingness to seek out novel information.
Questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and more-effective interactions, they strengthen rapport and trust, and lead groups toward discovery.
I believe questions and answers have a power that goes far beyond matters of performance. The wellspring of all questions is wonder and curiosity and a capacity for delight. We pose and respond to queries in the belief that the magic of a conversation will produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sustained personal engagement and motivation - in our lives as well as our work - require that we are always mindful of the transformative joy of asking and answering questions.
Until next time...
Comments