The surprising power of the right questions
Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 3:44 am
Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool that brings great value to organizations and encourages learning and the exchange of ideas, drives innovation and performance improvement, builds rapport and trust between team members, and of course, can mitigate business risk.
A large part of CEOs’ workday is spent seeking information from other people – such as from team leaders about the status of ongoing projects or simply in tense negotiations with clients that involve a lot of questions and answers.
However, unlike professionals like lawyers, journalists and doctors, who are rcs data uk how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, many need help asking the right questions to make their conversations much more productive.
Photo: Pixabay
But the technique of asking good questions is especially important in the educational process, and the student needs to know how to ask the right questions to the professor, and vice versa. And the professor needs to know what and how to ask.
Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool that fosters learning and the exchange of ideas, drives innovation and performance improvement, and builds rapport and trust among team members.
For some people, asking questions comes easily. Their natural curiosity, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question at the top of their tongue. But most people don’t ask enough questions, let alone ask the right questions in the optimal way.
The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners. It's a virtuous cycle.
The Harvard Business Review is particularly concerned with this issue , and their articles are based on insights from scientific research on how people behave when asking questions.
A large part of CEOs’ workday is spent seeking information from other people – such as from team leaders about the status of ongoing projects or simply in tense negotiations with clients that involve a lot of questions and answers.
However, unlike professionals like lawyers, journalists and doctors, who are rcs data uk how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, many need help asking the right questions to make their conversations much more productive.
Photo: Pixabay
But the technique of asking good questions is especially important in the educational process, and the student needs to know how to ask the right questions to the professor, and vice versa. And the professor needs to know what and how to ask.
Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool that fosters learning and the exchange of ideas, drives innovation and performance improvement, and builds rapport and trust among team members.
For some people, asking questions comes easily. Their natural curiosity, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question at the top of their tongue. But most people don’t ask enough questions, let alone ask the right questions in the optimal way.
The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners. It's a virtuous cycle.
The Harvard Business Review is particularly concerned with this issue , and their articles are based on insights from scientific research on how people behave when asking questions.