How to Ask Great Questions

Alison Wood Brooks

Leslie K. John

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">In Brief</h4>
 <div class="ideainbrief-contents">
  <h5>The Problem</h5>
  <p>Some professionals such as litigators, journalists and even doctors, are taught to ask questions as part of their training. But few executives think about questioning as a skill that can be honed. That’s a missed opportunity.</p>
  <h5>The Opportunity</h5>
  <p>Questioning is a powerful tool for unlocking value in companies: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and better performance, it builds trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.</p>
  <h5>The Approach</h5>
  <p>Several techniques can enhance the power and efficacy of queries: Favor follow-up questions, know when to keep questions open-ended, get the sequence right, use the right tone, and pay attention to group dynamics.</p>
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief><p>Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught <a href="/2015/03/relearning-the-art-of-asking-questions" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">how to ask questions</a> as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.</p>

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<p>Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: 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. But few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed&#8212;or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a missed opportunity. The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners&#8212;a virtuous cycle. The authors draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. They offer 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 organizations.</p>

The Surprising Power of Questions

Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: 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. But few executives 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. The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners—a virtuous cycle. The authors draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. They offer 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 organizations.

The Surprising Power of Questions

Summary.

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