Asking Great Questions; Art or Skill?

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Comments

[sarge]

Great thoughts. Thanks.

[Skip]

Rosa,

You have tapped into the core of what makes a good manager. Conversations, collaboration, providing direction, and getting the right information are all core to the manager's job. Without the ability to ask good questions, you might miss important information needed to do your job as a manager. You could make the wrong decision, hire the wrong person, move in the wrong direction all because the question you asked wasn't "good" enough.

As most things with becoming a manager, asking great questions isn't something that happens from day one on the job as a new manager (at least for most of us!). It takes great practice on an ongoing basis to hone in on the right questions to get the answers you need.

You can't give up and need to learn from your past conversations so that the next question can be more effective. With time, you will find the right questions to ask and become a great manager in the process!

Glad you liked my post. My blog is an extension of my life as an executive manager. I hope to ask good questions to the blogosphere in order to start conversations and to learn what answers we can all learn from!

Over these past few months, the skill of determining what to write in my blog and get the results I am hoping for have improved. Just to see that you referred to my site two posts in a row gives me the confidence that I must be doing something right.

[Steve Sherlock]

Rosa, I agree that asking good questions is both an art and a skill. There is a dual level of skill involved actually. One on the purely technical level of whatever the subject is (the content). You don't need to be a subject matter expert but you need to have more than a familiarity with the subject to ask good questions. And then you can deal in the context of asking the skillful question.

That much said, I believe there is an art to the questioning. Reading all of the other environmental items, body language, posture, tone of voice, readiness to answer... all of these items can be perceived and used by the artful questioner in the right manner at the right time.

The combination of skill and art can be devestatingly effective. The questionee would provide the answers (i.e information) without really understanding what "really" was happening. It was just a conversation to them. The artful manipulation never occurred.

The questioner walks away having been successful again!

[Beth Robinson]

Having trained in Appreciative Inquiry as a powerful method for facilitating change, I am always encouraged to hear stories of the power of questions in practical, everyday, embedded in the workplace situations.

What I really like in Rosa's story is how she and her managers really LISTENED to the answers. I learned from a friend who is an expert at marketing that one of the most damaging things you can do in the workplace, or in any relationship for that matter, is to ask questions without caring about the answers or to ignore the answers you receive. And, conversely, you know real dialogue has begun when asking questions becomes a habit throughout the organization, when every employee becomes curious, feels free to wonder "what if".