articles of incorporation A Lot of an executive workday is spent Asking others for advice --requesting status updates from a staff leader, for example, or
questioning a counterpart at a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals like litigators, journalists, and physicians, that are
taught how to ask questions as an important part of their instruction, few executives consider questioning as a skill which could
be honed--or believe the way their own answers to queries can make conversations more effective.
That's a missed opportunity. Questioning is A uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It hastens learning and
the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds awareness and trust among team members. Plus it
may mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and dangers.
For some folks, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people place
the perfect question on the tip of their tongue. However, most of us don't ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in
an optimal way.
We obviously enhance our emotional intelligence, which then causes us better questioners--a virtuous cycle. In this guide, we draw
on insights from behavioral science research to research how the way we frame questions and decide to answer our counterparts may
help determine the results of conversations. We offer guidance for choosing the best kind, tone, sequence, and framing of
questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the maximum benefit from our interactions, not just for
ourselves but for our organizations.
Don't Ask, Don't Get
"Be a good listener," Dale Carnegie advised Other man will enjoy answering." Over 80 years later, most people still Fail to heed
Carnegie's sage advice. When one of us (Alison) started studying Conversations at Harvard Business School several years back, she
immediately arrived In a foundational penetration: People do not ask enough questions. In Reality, among The most common
complaints people make after having a dialog, like an Interview, a first date, or a work interview, is"I need [s/he] had asked me
more Questions" and"I can't think [s/he] did not ask me some questions"