When You Anwser a Person Question 5 Times and They Ask That Question Again That Person Is Called a
In Cursory
The Problem
Some professionals such as litigators, journalists and even doctors, are taught to inquire questions as function of their training. But few executives think well-nigh questioning as a skill that can be 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 better performance, information technology builds trust among team members. And it tin mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
The Approach
Several techniques can heighten the ability and efficacy of queries: Favor follow-up questions, know when to keep questions open-concluded, get the sequence right, utilise the right tone, and pay attention to group dynamics.
Much of an executive's workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for instance, or questioning a analogue in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such equally litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to inquire questions equally an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning every bit a skill that tin can be honed—or consider how their ain answers to questions could make conversations more productive.
That's 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 performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust amid team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
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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. Just virtually of us don't ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal mode.
The good news is that past asking questions, we naturally ameliorate our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners—a virtuous cycle. In this commodity, nosotros draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the style we frame questions and choose to reply our counterparts can influence the issue of conversations. We 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 simply for ourselves only for our organizations.
Don't Ask, Don't Get
"Be a good listener," Dale Carnegie brash in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. "Enquire questions the other person volition savor answering." More 80 years afterwards, about people still fail to heed Carnegie's sage advice. When one of us (Alison) began studying conversations at Harvard Business School several years ago, she quickly arrived at a foundational insight: People don't inquire enough questions. In fact, amid the most common complaints people make later on having a conversation, such as an interview, a offset date, or a work coming together, is "I wish [southward/he] had asked me more questions" and "I can't believe [southward/he] didn't ask me any questions."
Why exercise so many of us concur back? There are many reasons. People may be egoistic—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 plenty to inquire, or they anticipate being bored by the answers they'd hear. They may be overconfident in their ain knowledge and think they already know the answers (which sometimes they practice, but usually not). Or mayhap they worry that they'll enquire the incorrect question and exist viewed as rude or incompetent. But the biggest inhibitor, in our opinion, is that virtually people only don't understand how beneficial proficient questioning can be. If they did, they would end far fewer sentences with a menstruum—and more with a question mark.
Dating back to the 1970s, inquiry suggests that people take conversations to attain some combination of two major goals: information commutation (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 enquire many questions (at least nine in fifteen 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 ask many questions were amend liked by their conversation partners and learned more near their partners' interests. For example, when quizzed virtually their partners' preferences for activities such as reading, cooking, and exercising, high question askers were more likely to be able to guess correctly. Among the speed daters, people were more than willing to go on a second date with partners who asked more questions. In fact, request only one more than question on each appointment meant that participants persuaded one boosted person (over the class of 20 dates) to get out with them again.
Asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding.
Questions are such powerful tools that they can exist beneficial—mayhap particularly so—in circumstances when question request goes against social norms. For example, prevailing norms tell us that job candidates are expected to answer questions during interviews. But inquiry past Dan Cablevision, at the London Business organisation Schoolhouse, and Virginia Kay, at the University of Due north Carolina, suggests that about people excessively cocky-promote during task 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 favorably and could help the candidate predict whether the chore would provide satisfying work. For chore candidates, asking questions such as "What am I not asking you lot that I should?" can signal competence, build rapport, and unlock key pieces of data most the position.
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About people don't grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison's studies, for case, though people could accurately call up how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn't intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others' conversations, people tended non to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.
The New Socratic Method
The starting time step in condign a better questioner is but to ask more questions. Of form, 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.
In our pedagogy at Harvard Concern Schoolhouse, we run an practise in which nosotros instruct pairs of students to have a chat. Some students are told to ask as few questions every bit possible, and some are instructed to ask as many as possible. Among the depression-low pairs (both students ask a minimum of questions), participants by and large report that the experience 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 find that too many questions can besides create a stilted dynamic. Still, the high-low pairs' experiences are mixed. Sometimes the question asker learns a lot well-nigh her partner, the answerer feels heard, and both come away feeling profoundly closer. Other times, one of the participants may experience uncomfortable in his role or unsure about how much to share, and the conversation can feel similar an interrogation.
Our research suggests several approaches that can enhance the power and efficacy of queries. The best 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 relationship or accomplish a chore together) or competitive (the parties seek to uncover sensitive information from each other or serve their own interests), or some combination of both. Consider the following tactics.
Conversations fall along a continuum from purely competitive to purely cooperative. For example, discussions near the allocation of scarce resources tend to be competitive; those between friends and colleagues are generally cooperative; and others, such managers' cheque-ins with employees, are mixed—supportive simply also providing feedback and communicating expectations. Here are some challenges that commonly arise when asking and answering questions and tactics for handling them.
Favor follow-up questions.
Non all questions are created equal. Alison's enquiry, using homo coding and auto learning, revealed iv types of questions: introductory questions ("How are you?"), mirror questions ("I'm fine. How are yous?"), full-switch questions (ones that alter the topic entirely), and follow-up questions (ones that solicit more information). Although each type is abundant in natural conversation, follow-upwards 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 a partner who asks lots of follow-upwardly questions tend to feel respected and heard.
An unexpected benefit of follow-upward questions is that they don't require much thought or preparation—indeed, they seem to come naturally to interlocutors. In Alison'southward studies, the people who were told to ask more questions used more than follow-upwardly questions than whatsoever other type without being instructed to do so.
Know when to go on questions open-ended.
No ane likes to feel interrogated—and some types of questions can force answerers into a yes-or-no corner. Open-ended questions tin can counteract that effect and thus tin be particularly useful in uncovering data 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.
A wealth of enquiry in survey design has shown the dangers of narrowing respondents' options. For example, "airtight" questions can innovate bias and manipulation. In one study, in which parents were asked what they deemed "the well-nigh important thing for children to prepare them in life," virtually 60% of them chose "to call up for themselves" from a list of response options. However, when the same question was asked in an open-ended format, only about 5% of parents spontaneously came up with an answer along those lines.
Of course, open-ended questions aren't always optimal. For example, if you lot are in a tense negotiation or are dealing with people who tend to keep their cards close to their breast, open-ended questions can leave too much wiggle room, inviting them to dodge or lie by omission. In such situations, airtight questions piece of work amend, specially if they are framed correctly. For case, enquiry by Julia Minson, the Academy of Utah'southward Eric VanEpps, Georgetown's Jeremy Yip, and Wharton'south Maurice Schweitzer indicates that people are less likely to lie if questioners make pessimistic assumptions ("This business volition need some new equipment soon, right?") rather than optimistic ones ("The equipment is in practiced working lodge, right?").
Sometimes the information you wish to define is so sensitive that straight questions won't work, no thing how thoughtfully they are framed. In these situations, a survey tactic tin aid discovery. In research Leslie conducted with Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University, she found that people were more forthcoming when requests for sensitive information were couched within another job—in the report's case, rating the ethicality of hating behaviors such every bit adulterous on one's tax return or letting a boozer friend drive home. Participants were asked to rate the ethicality using one scale if they had engaged in a particular behavior and some other scale if they hadn't—thus revealing which antisocial acts they themselves had engaged in. Although this tactic may sometimes testify useful at an organizational level—we can imagine that managers might administer a survey rather than ask workers direct about sensitive information such as salary expectations—we counsel restraint in using it. If people experience that you are trying to trick them into revealing something, they may lose trust in you, 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 commencement, even if it feels socially awkward to do so, can make your conversational partner more than willing to open up. Leslie and her coauthors establish that people are more than willing to reveal sensitive data when questions are asked in a decreasing gild of intrusiveness. When a question asker begins with a highly sensitive question—such equally "Take y'all ever had a fantasy of doing something terrible to someone?"—subsequent questions, such as "Have you lot ever called in sick to work when you lot were perfectly healthy?" feel, past comparison, less intrusive, and thus we tend to be more forthcoming. Of form, if the kickoff question is as well sensitive, you run the chance of offending your counterpart. So it's a delicate balance, to exist sure.
If the goal is to build relationships, the contrary approach—opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly—seems to be most effective. In a classic set of studies (the results of which went viral following a write-upwards in the "Modernistic Love" cavalcade of the New York Times), psychologist Arthur Aron recruited strangers to come to the lab, paired them upward, and gave them a listing of questions. They were told to piece of work their fashion through the list, starting with relatively shallow inquiries and progressing to more self-revelatory ones, such as "What is your biggest regret?" Pairs in the command grouping were asked but to interact with each other. The pairs who followed the prescribed structure liked each other more than the control pairs. This event is so strong that it has been formalized in a task called "the relationship closeness consecration," a tool used past researchers to build a sense of connexion among experiment participants.
Asking tough questions first can make people more willing to open upwards.
Expert interlocutors also understand that questions asked previously in a conversation can influence futurity queries. For example, Norbert Schwarz, of the Academy of Southern California, and his coauthors constitute that when the question "How satisfied are yous with your life?" is followed by the question "How satisfied are yous with your marriage?" the answers were highly correlated: Respondents who reported being satisfied with their life also said they were satisfied with their marriage. When asked the questions in this society, people implicitly interpreted that life satisfaction "ought to be" closely tied to marriage. Withal, when the same questions were asked in the opposite gild, the answers were less closely correlated.
Employ the right tone.
People are more forthcoming when y'all ask questions in a casual way, rather than in a buttoned-upwardly, official tone. In ane of Leslie'southward studies, participants were posed a series of sensitive questions in an online survey. For one grouping 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 as likely to reveal sensitive information on the casual-looking site than on the others.
People as well tend to be more forthcoming when given an escape hatch or "out" in a chat. For example, if they are told that they tin change their answers at any betoken, they tend to open more—even though they rarely end up making changes. This might explicate why teams and groups discover brainstorming sessions and then productive. In a whiteboard setting, where anything tin exist erased and judgment is suspended, people are more than probable to respond questions honestly and say things they otherwise might not. Of grade, there will be times when an off-the-cuff arroyo is inappropriate. Simply in full general, an overly formal tone is probable to inhibit people's willingness to share information.
Pay attention to group dynamics.
Conversational dynamics can alter greatly depending on whether you're chatting i-on-one with someone or talking in a group. Not only is the willingness to reply questions afflicted simply by the presence of others, but members of a group tend to follow one another'due south lead. In i set of studies, Leslie and her coauthors asked participants a series of sensitive questions, including ones almost finances ("Accept y'all ever bounced a check?") and sexual practice ("While an adult, have you lot e'er felt sexual desire for a modest?"). Participants were told either that most others in the study were willing to reveal stigmatizing answers or that they were unwilling to practice then. 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, as well. As shortly as one person starts to open upwardly, the rest of the group is probable to follow adapt.
Group dynamics tin also affect how a question asker is perceived. Alison'southward research reveals that participants in a conversation relish being asked questions and tend to like the people asking questions more than those who answer them. Only when tertiary-party observers sentry 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.
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 fourth dimension. But as the way we inquire questions can facilitate trust and the sharing of data—and so, too, can the way we reply them.
Answering questions requires making a selection almost 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 usa in a disadvantaged strategic position? Each end of the spectrum—fully opaque and fully transparent—has benefits and pitfalls. Keeping information private tin can make usa feel free to experiment and larn. In negotiations, withholding sensitive information (such as the fact that your alternatives are weak) tin help yous secure better outcomes. At the same fourth dimension, transparency is an essential part of forging meaningful connections. Even in a negotiation context, transparency tin can lead to value-creating deals; past sharing information, participants tin identify elements that are relatively unimportant to one party only important to the other—the foundation of a win-win outcome.
And keeping secrets has costs. Research by Julie Lane and Daniel Wegner, of the Academy of Virginia, suggests that concealing secrets during social interactions leads to the intrusive recurrence of secret thoughts, while research by Columbia'southward Michael Slepian, Jinseok Chun, and Malia Bricklayer shows that keeping secrets—even outside of social interactions—depletes us cognitively, interferes with our ability to concentrate and remember things, and even harms long-term wellness and well-existence.
In an organizational context, people too often err on the side of privacy—and underappreciate the benefits of transparency. How oft do we realize that we could have truly bonded with a colleague only after he or she has moved on to a new visitor? Why are better deals ofttimes uncovered afterward the ink has dried, the tension has broken, and negotiators begin to chat freely?
To maximize the benefits of answering questions—and minimize the risks—information technology'southward important to determine before a conversation begins what information y'all want to share and what you lot desire to keep private.
Deciding what to share.
There is no rule of thumb for how much—or what type—of data you should disembalm. Indeed, transparency is such a powerful bonding amanuensis that sometimes it doesn't affair what is revealed—even information that reflects poorly on usa tin draw our conversational partners closer. In research Leslie conducted with HBS collaborators Kate Barasz and Michael Norton, she establish that well-nigh people assume that it would exist less damaging to refuse to answer a question that would reveal negative information—for example, "Take you lot e'er been reprimanded at piece of work?"—than to answer affirmatively. But this intuition is wrong. When they asked people to take the perspective of a recruiter and choose betwixt two candidates (equivalent except for how they responded to this question), nearly 90% preferred the candidate who "came clean" and answered the question. Before a conversation takes place, remember carefully nearly whether refusing to respond tough questions would practice more damage than good.
Deciding what to go along private.
Of course, at times y'all and your organization would be better served by keeping your cards close to your chest. In our negotiation classes, we teach strategies for handling hard questions without lying. Dodging, or answering a question you lot wish you had been asked, can exist effective not only in helping you protect information yous'd rather keep private only also in building a good rapport with your conversational partner, especially if you lot speak eloquently. In a report led past Todd Rogers, of Harvard'southward Kennedy Schoolhouse, participants were shown clips of political candidates responding to questions by either answering them or dodging them. Eloquent dodgers were liked more ineloquent answerers, simply just when their dodges went undetected. Another effective strategy is deflecting, or answering a probing question with another question or a joke. Answerers can use this approach to lead the chat in a unlike direction.
CONCLUSION
"Question everything," Albert Einstein famously said. Personal creativity and organizational 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 atomic number 82 groups toward discovery. All this we have documented in our research. But we believe questions and answers have a power that goes far beyond matters of functioning. The wellspring of all questions is wonder and marvel and a capacity for please. Nosotros 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 besides every bit our work—require that we are ever mindful of the transformative joy of request and answering questions.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2022 issue (pp.60–67) of Harvard Business Review.
Source: https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions
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