To Lead, What Questions Should You Ask? And When?

 

I remember seeing a sign with “The four most important words”:

Ask questions and listen. 

Excellent advice, especially in light of the fact that authoritarian behavior shuts down worker participation and reduces employee engagement. Even if you do not have an authoritarian personality, you may not be active enough in questioning effectively.

It’s easy to get better. Just be aware of opportunities and capitalize on them. Here are some tips.

When to ask:

• in planning meetings
• when developing status reports
• when resolving difficult issues
• when you want to influence without pushing
• when you want to see that people are working efficiently without intimidating them
• at the water cooler or other casual settings
• when you want to learn what is really going on
• to discover more about the people you need to work with to get work done

What to ask:

• So what are next steps?
• What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals? What do you want to get out of this?
• What are your challenges? What are the challenges of your team?
• What can we do to improve how we work together? What do we need to do to be successful in the coming weeks?
• How are you going to handle this situation?
• Who are you going to involve in the solution?
• Why do you think that happened?
• What are things we can do to get better quality next time?
• What do you think about the UX team?
• Those are reasons we may not be able to do it; what are ways we may be able to accomplish this task?

What not to ask:

• What’s your problem?
• Don’t you know better than that?
• How could you do that?
• What were you thinking?
• Any questions that are answered by “Yes” or “No”

Asking questions not only gets you answers, it shows you care without having to hug anyone. It is clear evidence that you involve others. That stimulates the project team and stakeholders to participate more.

Plan to use more questions in your next interactions.

Bonus tip:  Avoid judgment when asking questions and listening - unless you are making positive, supportive statements. Critical reactions reduce the full answers you will get next time.