Ancient Art of Asking Questions to Hold a Conversation
In Brief
The Problem
Some professionals such as litigators, journalists and fifty-fifty doctors, are taught to ask questions as part of their training. Merely few executives recollect virtually questioning every bit a skill that can exist honed. That's a missed opportunity.
The Opportunity
Questioning is a powerful tool for unlocking value in companies: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and meliorate performance, information technology builds trust among team members. And it can mitigate business organisation risk past uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
The Approach
Several techniques can raise the ability and efficacy of queries: Favor follow-upwardly questions, know when to keep questions open-concluded, get the sequence right, use the right tone, and pay attention to group dynamics.
Much of an executive'south workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Notwithstanding dissimilar professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to enquire questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their ain answers to questions could make conversations more productive.
That'due south a missed opportunity. Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and operation comeback, information technology builds rapport and trust amidst team members. And it tin can mitigate business gamble by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
For some people, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and power to read people put the ideal question on the tip of their tongue. But well-nigh of us don't inquire enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal mode.
The good news is that past asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners—a virtuous cycle. In this article, we describe on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the mode we frame questions and cull to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. We offering guidance for choosing the all-time type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the almost do good from our interactions, non just for ourselves but for our organizations.
Don't Inquire, Don't Get
"Be a skilful listener," Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 archetype How to Win Friends and Influence People. "Inquire questions the other person volition enjoy answering." More fourscore years afterwards, about people even so fail to mind Carnegie's sage communication. When one of the states (Alison) began studying conversations at Harvard Business School several years agone, she quickly arrived at a foundational insight: People don't ask enough questions. In fact, among the most mutual complaints people make after having a conversation, such equally an interview, a first date, or a work meeting, is "I wish [s/he] had asked me more than questions" and "I tin't believe [s/he] didn't inquire me whatsoever questions."
Why do then many of us hold dorsum? There are many reasons. People may exist egocentric—eager to impress others with their own thoughts, stories, and ideas (and not even remember to ask questions). Maybe they are apathetic—they don't intendance enough to ask, or they conceptualize beingness bored past the answers they'd hear. They may be overconfident in their own knowledge and think they already know the answers (which sometimes they practise, just ordinarily not). Or perhaps they worry that they'll ask the wrong question and exist viewed every bit rude or incompetent. Merely the biggest inhibitor, in our opinion, is that well-nigh people only don't empathise how beneficial good questioning tin exist. If they did, they would stop far fewer sentences with a period—and more with a question marking.
Dating back to the 1970s, research suggests that people accept conversations to reach some combination of two major goals: data exchange (learning) and impression management (liking). Contempo research shows that asking questions achieves both. Alison and Harvard colleagues Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino scrutinized thousands of natural conversations among participants who were getting to know each other, either in online chats or on in-person speed dates. The researchers told some people to ask many questions (at least nine in 15 minutes) and others to ask very few (no more than four in 15 minutes). In the online chats, the people who were randomly assigned to inquire many questions were amend liked by their conversation partners and learned more about their partners' interests. For instance, when quizzed about their partners' preferences for activities such as reading, cooking, and exercising, high question askers were more probable to be able to guess correctly. Amongst the speed daters, people were more than willing to go on a second date with partners who asked more questions. In fact, asking just i more question on each date meant that participants persuaded i additional person (over the course of 20 dates) to go out with them once again.
Asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding.
Questions are such powerful tools that they can be beneficial—perhaps particularly so—in circumstances when question request 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 enquire questions—about the interviewer, the organisation, the work—that would brand the interviewer feel more engaged and more apt to view the candidate favorably and could help the candidate predict whether the job would provide satisfying piece of work. For job candidates, asking questions such as "What am I not asking you that I should?" tin can signal competence, build rapport, and unlock key pieces of data about the position.
Most people don't grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison'due south studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn't intuit the link between questions and liking. Beyond 4 studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others' conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.
The New Socratic Method
The first step in becoming a improve questioner is only to inquire more than questions. Of course, the sheer number of questions is not the only factor that influences the quality of a chat: The type, tone, sequence, and framing also affair.
In our didactics at Harvard Business School, nosotros run an do in which nosotros instruct pairs of students to accept a conversation. Some students are told to ask as few questions equally possible, and some are instructed to enquire every bit many as possible. Among the depression-low pairs (both students ask a minimum of questions), participants more often than not report that the feel is a bit like children engaging in parallel play: They exchange statements but struggle to initiate an interactive, enjoyable, or productive dialogue. The high-high pairs discover that too many questions can also create a stilted dynamic. However, the loftier-low pairs' experiences are mixed. Sometimes the question asker learns a lot virtually her partner, the answerer feels heard, and both come away feeling profoundly closer. Other times, one of the participants may feel uncomfortable in his role or unsure about how much to share, and the chat can feel like an interrogation.
Our research suggests several approaches that can raise the ability and efficacy of queries. The all-time arroyo for a given situation depends on the goals of the conversationalists—specifically, whether the give-and-take is cooperative (for example, the duo is trying to build a human relationship or accomplish a task together) or competitive (the parties seek to uncover sensitive data from each other or serve their own interests), or some combination of both.
Consider the post-obit tactics.
Favor follow-upwardly questions.
Not all questions are created equal. Alison's research, using human coding and motorcar learning, revealed four types of questions: introductory questions ("How are you?"), mirror questions ("I'thousand fine. How are y'all?"), full-switch questions (ones that change the topic entirely), and follow-upward questions (ones that solicit more than information). Although each type is abundant in natural chat, follow-up questions seem to take special ability. They signal to your conversation partner that you are listening, care, and desire to know more. People interacting with a partner who asks lots of follow-upwardly questions tend to feel respected and heard.
An unexpected benefit of follow-up questions is that they don't require much idea or grooming—indeed, they seem to come naturally to interlocutors. In Alison's studies, the people who were told to enquire more questions used more follow-upwards questions than any other type without existence instructed to practice then.
Know when to proceed questions open-ended.
No one likes to feel interrogated—and some types of questions tin can force answerers into a yes-or-no corner. Open up-ended questions can counteract that result and thus can exist specially useful in uncovering data or learning something new. Indeed, they are wellsprings of innovation—which is frequently the result of finding the hidden, unexpected answer that no one has thought of before.
A wealth of research in survey pattern has shown the dangers of narrowing respondents' options. For example, "closed" questions tin introduce bias and manipulation. In one report, in which parents were asked what they deemed "the virtually of import thing for children to prepare them in life," virtually 60% of them chose "to recall for themselves" from a list of response options. However, when the same question was asked in an open-ended format, simply about 5% of parents spontaneously came up with an respond along those lines.
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 contrivance or lie by omission. In such situations, closed questions work better, especially if they are framed correctly. For example, enquiry by Julia Minson, the University of Utah's Eric VanEpps, Georgetown's Jeremy Yip, and Wharton'south Maurice Schweitzer indicates that people are less likely to prevarication if questioners make pessimistic assumptions ("This business will need some new equipment soon, right?") rather than optimistic ones ("The equipment is in good working lodge, right?").
Read more than about
Sometimes the data you lot wish to ascertain is so sensitive that direct questions won't piece of work, no matter how thoughtfully they are framed. In these situations, a survey tactic can aid discovery. In research Leslie conducted with Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University, she found that people were more than forthcoming when requests for sensitive information were couched inside some other task—in the study'due south case, rating the ethicality of antisocial behaviors such as cheating on one'south tax render or letting a drunkard friend bulldoze home. Participants were asked to rate the ethicality using ane scale if they had engaged in a item behavior and another scale if they hadn't—thus revealing which antisocial acts they themselves had engaged in. Although this tactic may sometimes evidence useful at an organizational level—nosotros can imagine that managers might administer a survey rather than ask workers directly about sensitive information such equally salary expectations—we counsel restraint in using information technology. If people feel that y'all are trying to trick them into revealing something, they may lose trust in yous, decreasing the likelihood that they'll share information in the future and potentially eroding workplace relationships.
Get the sequence right.
The optimal order of your questions depends on the circumstances. During tense encounters, request tough questions first, even if it feels socially awkward to practice so, can make your conversational partner more willing to open up. Leslie and her coauthors found that people are more than 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—such as "Have you always had a fantasy of doing something terrible to someone?"—subsequent questions, such as "Have you ever called in ill to piece of work when you were perfectly healthy?" feel, past comparison, less intrusive, and thus we tend to be more forthcoming. Of course, if the first question is also sensitive, you run the risk of offending your analogue. Then it's a delicate balance, to exist certain.
If the goal is to build relationships, the contrary approach—opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly—seems to be well-nigh constructive. In a classic prepare of studies (the results of which went viral following a write-upward in the "Mod Beloved" column of the New York Times), psychologist Arthur Aron recruited strangers to come to the lab, paired them upwardly, and gave them a listing of questions. They were told to work their way through the list, starting with relatively shallow inquiries and progressing to more than cocky-revelatory ones, such as "What is your biggest regret?" Pairs in the control grouping were asked simply to interact with each other. The pairs who followed the prescribed structure liked each other more than the control pairs. This effect is so strong that it has been formalized in a task called "the relationship closeness consecration," a tool used by researchers to build a sense of connexion among experiment participants.
Practiced interlocutors also sympathise that questions asked previously in a conversation can influence future queries. For example, Norbert Schwarz, of the University of Southern California, and his coauthors found that when the question "How satisfied are you lot with your life?" is followed by the question "How satisfied are you with your marriage?" the answers were highly correlated: Respondents who reported beingness satisfied with their life likewise said they were satisfied with their marriage. When asked the questions in this social club, people implicitly interpreted that life satisfaction "ought to be" closely tied to marriage. However, when the same questions were asked in the opposite club, the answers were less closely correlated.
Utilise the right tone.
People are more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual style, rather than in a buttoned-up, official tone. In one of Leslie's studies, participants were posed a series of sensitive questions in an online survey. For 1 group of participants, the website's user interface looked fun and frivolous; for another group, the site looked official. (The control group was presented with a neutral-looking site.) Participants were almost twice equally likely to reveal sensitive information on the coincidental-looking site than on the others.
Asking tough questions start can brand people more willing to open up.
People also tend to be more than forthcoming when given an escape hatch or "out" in a conversation. For instance, if they are told that they can change their answers at any indicate, they tend to open up up more—even though they rarely stop up making changes. This might explicate why teams and groups find brainstorming sessions and then productive. In a whiteboard setting, where anything can be erased and judgment is suspended, people are more likely to answer questions honestly and say things they otherwise might not. Of form, in that location volition exist times when an off-the-cuff approach is inappropriate. But in full general, an overly formal tone is likely to inhibit people's willingness to share information.
Pay attention to group dynamics.
Conversational dynamics can modify profoundly depending on whether you're chatting one-on-i with someone or talking in a group. Non simply is the willingness to reply questions affected simply past the presence of others, merely members of a group tend to follow one another's lead. In one set of studies, Leslie and her coauthors asked participants a series of sensitive questions, including ones about finances ("Have you lot ever bounced a cheque?") and sex ("While an developed, have y'all ever felt sexual desire for a small?"). Participants were told either that most others in the written report were willing to reveal stigmatizing answers or that they were unwilling to do so. Participants who were told that others had been forthcoming were 27% likelier to reveal sensitive answers than those who were told that others had been reticent. In a meeting or group setting, it takes only a few closed-off people for questions to lose their probing ability. The opposite is true, also. As soon as i person starts to open, the rest of the group is likely to follow adapt.
Grouping dynamics tin can likewise touch on how a question asker is perceived. Alison's enquiry reveals that participants in a conversation enjoy existence asked questions and tend to like the people asking questions more than those who answer them. Merely when third-party observers sentry the aforementioned conversation unfold, they prefer the person who answers questions. This makes sense: People who mostly ask questions tend to disclose very picayune about themselves or their thoughts. To those listening to a conversation, question askers may come across equally defensive, evasive, or invisible, while those answering seem more fascinating, present, or memorable.
The All-time Response
A chat is a trip the light fantastic toe that requires partners to be in sync—it's a mutual push-and-pull that unfolds over time. But every bit the style we ask questions tin can facilitate trust and the sharing of information—so, besides, tin the manner nosotros answer them.
Answering questions requires making a choice about where to fall on a continuum betwixt privacy and transparency. Should we answer the question? If we respond, how forthcoming should we be? What should nosotros practise when asked a question that, if answered truthfully, might reveal a less-than-glamorous fact or put united states in a disadvantaged strategic position? Each terminate of the spectrum—fully opaque and fully transparent—has benefits and pitfalls. Keeping information private can make united states of america experience free to experiment and acquire. In negotiations, withholding sensitive information (such as the fact that your alternatives are weak) tin can help you lot secure ameliorate outcomes. At the same time, transparency is an essential role of forging meaningful connections. Even in a negotiation context, transparency can lead to value-creating deals; by sharing information, participants can place elements that are relatively unimportant to i party but of import to the other—the foundation of a win-win result.
And keeping secrets has costs. Research by Julie Lane and Daniel Wegner, of the University of Virginia, suggests that concealing secrets during social interactions leads to the intrusive recurrence of secret thoughts, while enquiry by Columbia's Michael Slepian, Jinseok Chun, and Malia Stonemason shows that keeping secrets—even outside of social interactions—depletes u.s. cognitively, interferes with our power to concentrate and recall things, and even harms long-term health and well-being.
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In an organizational context, people too often err on the side of privacy—and underappreciate the benefits of transparency. How often do we realize that we could have truly bonded with a colleague merely afterward he or she has moved on to a new visitor? Why are better deals often uncovered after the ink has stale, the tension has cleaved, and negotiators begin to chat freely?
To maximize the benefits of answering questions—and minimize the risks—it'due south important to decide before a chat begins what data you want to share and what you want to go along individual.
Deciding what to share.
In that location is no rule of thumb for how much—or what type—of information you should disembalm. Indeed, transparency is such a powerful bonding agent that sometimes it doesn't matter what is revealed—even information that reflects poorly on us tin draw our conversational partners closer. In research Leslie conducted with HBS collaborators Kate Barasz and Michael Norton, she found that most people assume that it would be less damaging to refuse to answer a question that would reveal negative information—for case, "Have yous ever been reprimanded at work?"—than to respond affirmatively. But this intuition is wrong. When they asked people to take the perspective of a recruiter and choose between two candidates (equivalent except for how they responded to this question), nearly xc% preferred the candidate who "came clean" and answered the question. Before a conversation takes place, call back carefully about whether refusing to respond tough questions would do more than harm than good.
Deciding what to proceed private.
Of course, at times you lot and your organization would exist amend served by keeping your cards close to your chest. In our negotiation classes, we teach strategies for handling difficult questions without lying. Dodging, or answering a question you wish y'all had been asked, can be effective non only in helping you protect information you'd rather keep individual but as well in edifice a good rapport with your conversational partner, especially if you speak eloquently. In a study led by Todd Rogers, of Harvard's Kennedy Schoolhouse, participants were shown clips of political candidates responding to questions by either answering them or dodging them. Eloquent dodgers were liked more than ineloquent answerers, but only when their dodges went undetected. Some other constructive strategy is deflecting, or answering a probing question with another question or a joke. Answerers tin can utilize this approach to lead the conversation in a different direction.
. . .
"Question everything," Albert Einstein famously said. Personal creativity and organizational innovation rely on a willingness to seek out novel data. Questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and more-effective interactions, they strengthen rapport and trust, and pb groups toward discovery. All this nosotros take documented in our enquiry. But we 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 date and motivation—in our lives as well as our work—require that nosotros are ever mindful of the transformative joy of asking and answering questions.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2018 consequence of Harvard Business organization Review.
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Source: https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions
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