CHAPTER 5:
Top-Tier Questioning Techniques
Managers use questions in interviewing, delegating, giving feedback, coaching, problem solving, decision making, and developing employees. This chapter examines various types of questions and the purpose of each. This chapter shows how to ask questions to get vital information to meet business objectives and preserve relationships.
Why do managers need to master asking appropriate questions? What has questioning to do with management communication? Asking questions of oneself and others is part of finding the content information necessary for any process to work. Whether the process is sales, engineering, hiring, delegating, giving feedback, coaching, or anything else, skilled questioning techniques are imperative to gather facts and opinions. In addition to aiding process, well-constructed questions contribute to reciprocal relationships, as we see in the next section.
Purpose of Questioning
Questions help move the work forward. Raising questions can help people to conceptualize groundbreaking products and services, to discover innovative processes, to follow established process, to determine a new technique, to analyze the root cause of problems, to analyze decisions, to plan for the future, to staff projects, and to gather facts for any situation. Questions get people to think about concepts and alternative routes. They challenge people to go deeper to find the optimal or new idea rather than the status quo, check for accuracy, and examine the comprehensiveness of their thinking. Questioning assumptions and presuppositions can lead to higher quality work and job satisfaction.
Questions can also help people build and sustain healthy work relationships. Thoughtful questions can demonstrate trust and interest in the employees’ intellectual capacity. These questions can be a factor in expanding employees’ development and ability to take on more stimulating assignments. Asking questions shows attention to employees and their ideas, demonstrates that the manager has the competence to know what to ask to advance the task or project, and helps the employee enhance professional skills and knowledge by widening the scope of possibilities.
Managers adept in questioning techniques enable employees to take ownership of their work challenges. Questions assist direct reports in thinking about and solving their own problems and making their own decisions. This leads to enhanced employee competence and independence on tasks and projects. Thinking independently fortifies employees’ proficiency and confidence.
Questioning is an important part of setting expectations and delegation. Since individuals’ perceptions may vary considerably, questioning is used to clarify goals, assignments, action steps, and progress so that the manager and direct reports have a common understanding. Managers state expectations that are perfectly clear to themselves. They then use questions to clarify what the employees actually heard, which might be quite different from what the manager intended.
During follow-up progress discussions, questioning assists a manager in learning about his direct reports’ points of view and thinking throughout the task or project. Asking appropriate questions can help employees stay on task and focused on business goals and increase ownership of the work since the employee is the person with the answers to the questions.
Benefits of Questions
There are numerous benefits to knowing how to ask targeted questions. When I was a manager, questioning skills enabled me to galvanize others to create groups, departments, products, and services where none previously existed. Questioning techniques advance collaboration, fact-finding, and innovation. They enable others to find ways to step up to new directions.
Questions involve others in a collaborative discovery process. Accomplished managers facilitate learning and engage others every day. Getting top results with and through other people requires setting the climate for learning and engagement. Questions pull information from capable people instead of pushing information at them. This reveals the leaders’ trust in employees’ abilities and it helps build constructive relationships.
Mastering the technique of asking questions in an empathetic way boosts the manager’s credibility. This questioning ability is essential to successful listening, and listening shows consideration for others and their contributions. Properly framed, empathetic questions advance management communication goals.
However, questioning because managers think they are supposed to ask questions has the opposite effect. Instead of enhancing a work relationship, it can injure it. If managers don’t want to listen to the answer, they should not ask the question. When the manager asks questions but already has a preferred answer in mind, this can also dent trust and increase stress. Who wants their time and energy wasted? The next time the manager questions the employees, they might shrug the question off rather than invest themselves in a futile conversation.
When managers’ intentions are to build relationships, gather ideas, and honestly collaborate for the best work result, questioning is a top-tier tool. Using this tool, managers can communicate better and reap rewards by developing their staff’s ability to fully contribute strengths to the team.
Managers who use appropriate questioning techniques also benefit employees in many ways. Employees learn how to ask questions by observing their managers do so effectively. They learn to work out interpersonal conflicts they have with coworkers by questioning and listening. Employees learn to use process skills and think in factual terms. They know they will be expected to present their opinions and data during feedback and coaching and learn to better formulate questions to get the information they need. By watching their manager, employees learn how to express their ideas, listen to other ideas, and synthesize ideas for practical solutions to working with coworkers up, down, and across the organization. They broaden their perspective by asking questions themselves and listening to others and learn about leadership. Direct reports also may feel supported and valued for their contributions and be energized and empowered.
Making Friends with Change
When I was a little girl, my mom called me “The Question Girl.” My curiosity compelled me to constantly ask questions. I wanted the details on just about every person, place, thing, idea, and situation I came across. Mom encouraged this insatiable desire for continual learning. Her nurturing of my natural inquisitiveness led me to believe that I do not have to have all the answers. I can successfully collaborate with others to explore ideas through questioning techniques. I can live in uncertainty and thus be partner to change and innovation.
On the other hand, Dad did not discuss the topics with me. “Look it up,” he would say. He referred me to books. Since there was no Internet yet, I had to identify specifically what my question was so I could look in the right part of the right books. I also learned to research for facts and analyze for myself.
The combination of working with others to answer questions and the research approach honed my searching abilities. The questions burned and the answers always created new questions. Is this the way your work takes you—to a new twist constantly? Managing change is a daily happenstance in most workplaces. Sharpening questioning skills can prepare a manager to take on any new challenge with confidence.
Questions—Barrage or Communication Tool?
How can you work questions into a conversation without sounding like you are interrogating a witness? Managers are influencers and facilitators in their quest to get results. They need to facilitate daily work discussions that include staff rather than put them on the defensive. How best to do that?
Put the questions in the context of why you are asking. For example, “To make a good decision about selecting new software, I would like to learn more about your research on the needs the various divisions have. Is this a good time to ask you some questions?” Or, “Let’s ask each other some questions about this new product proposal so we can advance the ideas to the next level.” Or, when a person comes to you for advice, “I know you can solve this problem yourself so instead of saying what I would do, I am going to help you think through your own solution by asking you some questions. Sound good?” Context gives the rationale for the questions and also the benefits of answering. When people know why they are being asked questions, they are usually more forthcoming and willing to converse.
Another way to avoid coming across like you are cross-examining a witness is to listen carefully. Listening to the person’s answer puts time and space between the questions and makes for a conversation rather than a barrage of questions. Reacting spontaneously to what the employee says in between the series of questions also creates a normal conversation.
Use a neutral, friendly tone of voice, and open, relaxed body language. Make sure neither one of you is in a hurry. Take enough time for the person to be comfortable if you have a list of questions to ask.
Four Types of Questions: Open, Closed, Behavioral, and Situational
Let’s talk about four different types of questions and the purpose of each: open, closed, behavioral, and situational. When deciding which type of question you need, reflect on “What information do I need back?” Each type of question will steer the person answering the question in a particular direction, so it’s important to know the purpose of each question and how to word it.
Your questions educate employees about what is important to you and the company. Are your questions high-level, or detailed? Are they process-oriented and fact-finding, or opinion-based? Are they jobrelated, or personal to you? Are they related to goals? Are they supportive, or accusatory? Do they relate to budget, timetables, and specifications? Do they direct the employee to think one way, or do they open the possibility that the employee is capable of solving the problem and deciding? Do they teach?
The questions you ask demonstrate your professionalism and competence as a leader as well as a coach for technical expertise. The level of your question shows how much knowledge you have about the technical aspects of the job and how well you know this employee’s ability on this particular task or project. Your query also signals how important the relationship is to you, based on the words and tone you choose. You also unveil the breadth of your management expertise by being able to flex your style based on the style and needs of the employee.
With all that looming in the wings, the importance of word choice and selecting the right type of question is elevated. Having a handle on questioning techniques is indispensable for successful managers.
1. Open Questions
An open or open-ended question broadens the opportunity for a wide array of responses. This type of question provides a chance for the person answering the question to assess and state what he thinks is important, express his opinions, expand upon facts, suggest alternatives, and apply his knowledge in varied ways. Open questions are useful for creative and collaborative problem solving and decision making.
Open questions elicit others’ ideas and assessments. Because employees’ ideas are considered and more ownership is invited, they may bring a higher degree of motivation to the task or project.
Since these questions generally open the conversation to a number of possible answers, you get more information than with closed questions. However, the challenge is that the person answering is free to answer in many divergent ways not controllable by the questioner without interrupting. Also, while the answers may help the manager to form a general impression, the employee may not give specific examples or sufficient detail. Such answers may require follow-up questions to probe deeper. Another disadvantage is that answers to open questions may lead to conversational detours, and the manager must be skilled to bring the focus back to the issue at hand.
When to Use. Open questions can be used during interviewing, delegating, project follow-up, monitoring progress on tasks and performance, giving and receiving feedback, coaching, getting employees to assess their achievements and performance, brainstorming, getting new ideas, working collaboratively, listening, clarifying your understanding or theirs, employee development, projects, assessing milestones, project debriefs, and planning for future projects.
Open questions encourage the direct reports to explore an issue or challenge them to analyze situations. They require more thinking than closed questions. Process questions are the ones most professionals wrestle with daily. They are mostly open-ended questions dealing with problem solving, analysis, synthesis, comparing and contrasting, creating, and thinking.
Benefits to Manager. Open questions are used to gather facts about the work, learn about your employees’ process skills and approaches to the tasks, discover what motivates and is important to them, and get a more well-rounded picture of events by listening to their sides of the story. They help employees develop competencies and confidence, which in turn leads to better work production. Open questions are also used to discover employees’ feelings, knowledge levels, skill needs, and views. Use these questions to find out information about employees so you can connect with, understand, and build a relationship with them.
Downside. It takes longer to listen to the answers because you can’t control the direction of the answers. The purpose is to allow expression and broad-based, wide-ranging responses. You might have to sift through extraneous information.
How to Formulate. Typically open questions start with What, How, or Why. Nonquestion statements that serve the purpose of an open question start with “Tell me about …,” “Describe …,” “Let’s talk about …,” “Compare and Contrast ….”
Examples of Open Questions
What is your opinion about …?
What happened that caused you to suddenly miss this deadline?
What will you do now?
What do you think about …?
What projects could be delayed if the budget were cut by 10 percent?
What could we use this extra material for?
What would happen if we did …?
What is this similar to that we’ve done in the past?
What did you observe?
What is the value of doing the project this way?
What would successful installation of this product look like to a customer?
What does this software update mean to our clients? To our competitors?
What information do you have on …?
What new opportunities does this information offer us? What potential problems?
What did we learn? How can we apply that to the future projects?
What went well? Why?
What would you do differently next time?
What did our team learn that was unexpected?
What are your goals for personal development next quarter?
What is the impact of the restructuring on our Latin America employees?
What do you think about our new project parameters?
What else do we need to consider?
What strategies do we need to consider to increase our customers in the Eastern region?
What are the benefits of opening a site in Europe?
What are the key alternatives we need to discuss?
What is our best alternative? Why?
What do the test results mean?
How will we know if the project is successful?
How else could we do this?
How can we fix this?
How does this differ from …?
How do you think we could …?
How should we negotiate this deal?
How could we approach this project?
How will your team interact with team x on the new task?
How does that compare to our top three customers’ visions of product installation?
How do you explain the fact that the part failed on one machine and not the other?
How does this change in direction affect you and your team?
How is the manufacturing division affected by the new OSHA regulation?
How does this hiring freeze impact the project?
How do you feel about this deadline?
If we take on this project, how will it impact your current priorities?
Why do you feel that way?
Why do you think this occurred?
Why are we considering Tokyo for our factory site?
Why should we choose this vendor over the other one?
Why did the machine fail?
Tell me how this works.
Tell me about a typical project life cycle.
Tell me about our market share and what we need to do to increase it.
Tell me about your key concerns with this deadline.
Tell us about our alternatives.
Describe how you see this project unfolding.
Describe what happened.
Describe the key features of our competitors’ products.
Let’s talk about the differences between version 2.0 and version 2.1.
Let’s talk about your understanding of senior management’s directive.
Compare and contrast the two top alternatives.
2. Closed Questions
Closed questions invite a yes/no or a short answer. The purpose is to elicit facts, to open a conversation, or to serve as a bridge to move the conversation along. They are used when you don’t need background information, detail, opinion, or theory.
When to Use. Use for the same management situations as for open questions.
Benefits to Manager. Saves time if a short answer is all the information needed.
Downside. Improperly used, they can come across as curt or cutting people off. They can also direct someone to agree or disagree, and the manager may miss an opportunity to learn about the person’s true thinking.
How to Formulate. There are several ways to ask a closed question. Typically, closed questions start with directive words such as Where, When, Who, Will, Would, Did, Do, Could, Can, Should, Are, Were, and sometimes the word What.
Examples of Closed Questions
Where in Europe are we looking for possible office sites?
Where did you get your experience in operations?
When did you send the report to Engineering?
When will the distributor deliver the parts?
When should we check progress again?
Who is the project manager?
Who called about the part breaking?
Will we open a factory in Australia this year? Where?
Will you submit that form to Quality Control by Thursday?
Would the customer buy our service if we gave a 5 percent discount?
Would you prepare a proposal for the senior executive committee?
Did Accounting reply to your e-mail?
Did we meet our deadline?
Did you get the announcement of the change initiative?
Did you complete the monthly report?
Did you give the customer the handout on our service policy?
By what percentage did our market share grow last year?
Do you work at home on Fridays?
Does our competitor sell this product?
Could we meet on Monday?
Could we come up with three options by Thursday?
Can your team meet the deadline if we add this new task?
Should we give gift certificates as a performance reward?
Are you CPR certified? When does your certification expire?
Are you ready to give your presentation to the executive committee?
Are we within budget?
Were you in our Paris office last week?
What is the budget for this project?
What is the address of the New York office?
What department do you work in?
3. Behavioral Questions
Behavioral questions use past behavior to predict what a person might do in the future. Behavior is what a person does or says. It is the observable manner in which a person acts or performs under specified circumstances. Behavioral questions refer to actions others can observe by using the five senses. In most offices, actions you can actually see people doing or statements you can hear them saying can be described as behavior. In libraries, stores, labs, manufacturing plants, restaurants, and other environments you may be able to apply the other senses of touch, smell, and taste.
When to Use. Most often behavioral questions are used in interviewing to discover what applicants have accomplished in the past and the way they did it. The idea is to project how the candidate would handle a similar situation on the job the manager has open. Some of my clients have also used behavioral questions in team training meetings. The manager asks teammates to answer a behavioral question about how they have handled a challenge. Several coworkers might answer the same question. As the colleagues listen, they learn a variety of ways to handle similar situations. Behavioral questions can also be used in coaching sessions to help employees build off a foundation of their past successes.
Benefits to Manager. Allows manager to zero in on specific work scenarios and target how a person has dealt with them in the past.
Downside. Their use is limited primarily to interviewing, unless the manager creatively finds ways to use them in progress discussions, training, and coaching.
How to Formulate. There are three elements of a behavioral question: The manager asks the question in the past tense and then asks the candidate to give a specific situation or example and tell exactly how he handled the situation.
Examples of Behavioral Questions
Describe a difficult problem you had with a customer and how you handled it. (As opposed to open questions, such as “Are you good with customers?” Or “Tell me about your customer service problems.”)
Tell me about a specific time when you had to deal with a gray area because there were no policies and procedures to follow. How did you handle it? (As opposed to “How well do you work when there are no established policies and procedures?”)
What was the last dangerous situation you faced on the job and how did you resolve it? ( As opposed to “How safely do you work?”)
Tell me about a typical day when there were a moderate number of interruptions and how you handled the situation and balanced the work. ( As opposed to “How closely do you concentrate when there are interruptions?”)
Describe what specifically you did as a team leader that made you excel. Please give a specific example. ( As opposed to “What are your strengths as a team leader?”)
Please give me an example of a time on a project when you thought you might go over budget and how you resolved it. ( As opposed to “How do you handle project budgets?”)
Examples for Monitoring Progress and/or Coaching
Tell me about your greatest achievement this past quarter and how you accomplished it.
Describe exactly what process you followed that enabled you to exceed quota this month. How did you go about it?
Tell me about your biggest organizational challenge on the project so far and how you handled it.
What was last month’s most important scheduling issue, and how did you resolve it?
Describe specifically what your department has done this quarter to contribute to the XXX corporate initiative in light of the budget cuts and how you went about it.
4. Situational Questions
Situational questions invite a person to think about how they would handle a situation that might arise in the future. These are “if/then” questions. They are designed to ask what a person would do, given a specific situation. They are hypothetical in nature and always asked in the future—“Suppose X happened. What would you do?”
When to Use. Use situational questions during interviewing, delegating, feedback, coaching, training, role-playing, rehearsing, or preparing for tough situations that might occur. You can use situational questions to do a practical run-through of potential problems and opportunities.
Benefits to Manager. They are useful when interviewing senior executive candidates and others to learn about their creative and spontaneous problem-solving and decision-making skills. On the job, such questions help a manager understand how a direct report would handle a situation of concern to the manager. They serve as a jumping-off point for discussion on alternative approaches to the work. They are a great coaching tool. Such questions help people think through how to solve their own problems and make their own decisions. They let employees know you trust their capability to handle situations. They reinforce your expectations that the employees plan and practice in advance and that you are there to help. Situational questions emphasize that you need to be kept in the loop, although employees are the owners of the situation.
Downside. You have to be sure to get agreement that the employee’s statement of how she would handle the situation is in fact going to be the approach she will follow.
How to Formulate. The questioner provides the specific scenario, as opposed to behavioral questions, which request the person answering the question to provide the example. It asks how a person thinks they would handle it in the future, not how they’ve done it in the past.
Examples of Situational Questions
Since you have not handled national accounts before, how would you handle X difficulty with a nationwide customer?
Let’s say the CEO asks you “X” in your upcoming presentation. How would you answer?
If you were to sell the new software to our top account, how would you handle the technical aspects?
If you were asked to increase productivity by 10 percent on your team, what would you do?
If you had to cut your budget by 6 percent, how would you handle it?
As head of HR, how would you plan and manage a downsizing if we have to go that route?
As marketing director, how would you handle the advertising of our new product if our customer base diversifies and grows by 25 percent?
If the other department has a conflicting priority with your project, how would you resolve it?
If your staff told you there is a quality problem with the new product due out this month, what would you do?
Using Questions for Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Processes
Chapter 4 discussed process as a formal, step-by-step approach to work. Successful organizations have processes, or systematic approaches, to manufacturing, sales, engineering, quality control, and so on.
Management activities can also benefit from having a systematic approach. For example, every day managers solve problems and make decisions. What can managers learn from engineers who analyze problems to find the root cause? Engineers might look for the exact reason a component failed or why there were variations in production instead of all products meeting the expected standard. They typically have a standard approach to finding root causes of problems. Part of this step-by-step, precise process is asking questions to ferret out accurate data.
Every day managers solve problems using analytical skills. They ask themselves questions in order to find the root cause of a problem before making a decision on what to do about it. The problems can relate to any function of the business within the manager’s span of control. Maybe there is a problem that a marketing campaign did not succeed and the team needs to know why. Or maybe a project is over budget and the manager needs to find the cause.
Some of the process questions often used to find root causes of problems are included here:
What is the exact problem to be solved?
How do I know?
Who else can shed light on this?
Why ask those particular people?
When did the problem first occur?
Why didn’t it occur earlier?
What else was going on at that time? What changed?
Is the trend getting worse, getting better, or staying the same?
How big or small is the problem?
What is the impact on the rest of the task/project/machine/team?
How does it change our time frame?
Who else needs to be notified?
What exactly is wrong?
Is the pattern of the problem intermittent, or constant?
Are other projects/tasks/machines/teams experiencing the same problem?
Why or why not?
What are the differences and similarities between our projects/tasks/machines/teams and theirs?
What are some potential causes of the problem?
How does each of those possible reasons fit with the observed facts?
Just as for finding the cause of a work problem, an analytical decision-making process also requires questions. Questions can help the manager uncover information to make an informed decision on something as relatively straightforward as “What desks should we purchase?” to more complex, intricate decisions, such as “Where in Asia should we locate our factory?”
Some typical decision-making process questions are included here:
What is the decision to be made?
Why is it being made?
What is the need for the decision?
Who should help make this decision?
At which point in the decision-making process should each person be brought in?
Which criteria are “essential” and must absolutely be met (budget, timelines, specifications)?
Which criteria would enhance the solution and are “nice to have,” but are not required?
What are the alternative solutions?
How does each alternative compare to the list of criteria?
Which alternatives are eliminated because they don’t meet all “essential” criteria?
If an alternative meets all the “essential” criteria, how well does it meet the specified “nice to have” criteria?
What are the risks associated with choosing each alternative?
How well can the team manage each of those risks to prevent potential problems?
How serious would it be if a problem occurred despite our best prevention efforts?
How can problems be resolved it they do occur?
How can the team best leverage possible opportunities?
What is the best decision?
Determining the best questions to ask to solve work-related problems and make decisions will be your call based on your situation. The important point is for you to collect an array of questions and become an expert using them at appropriate times.
Using Questions to Prevent and Solve People Problems
When managers use expert questioning techniques in delegating, monitoring work progress, giving feedback, and coaching they will prevent problems with people. However, despite best efforts, misunderstandings and conflicts will occur. Managers can be most effective if they use questions to prevent and solve people problems. Managers should remain neutral and ask questions to find root causes of the problem, just like they would do if there were a variation in performance of a machine or functional work situation. If managers identify the source of the problem, and use it as a learning opportunity, they are positioned for a more lasting solution that also preserves the relationship.
The list of questions to ask when problem solving or making decisions for functional work issues (covered in the section on using questions for problem solving and decision making) can be applied to situations involving people too. If a person did not meet a deadline, it is more useful to find out why than to label the person a “poor performer.” A manager can more easily solve the problem by staying with the issue at hand and the observable facts when evaluating performance and giving feedback. At a checkpoint meeting, if the milestone was missed, an opening question (asked in a friendly, supportive tone of voice) might be “What happened?” or “What’s going on?” These open-ended questions do not assess blame, so they help the employee save face. The employee can then open up and answer the question in a number of different ways. You might find out there is an organizational obstacle, a supplier didn’t meet the agreed-upon timelines, or another department did not deliver when it had agreed. A new opportunity might have evolved. If the delay is the employee’s responsibility, you might learn about a skill or motivational concern. In any case, you are better prepared to ask more questions.
Often at this point, a manager will say, “What can I do to help?” which moves right to a solution. If an employee is “stuck,” it might be more useful to coach with process questions so the employee can solve his own problem. These questions aid employees in discovering more about the problem and enable them to develop their own process skills.
For problem solving or decision making, you can ask open-ended questions from the list in that section of this chapter. Other questions to help the employees tap their own resources might be:
What parts of the project are working well? Why? How could you use that as a basis for the part you are working on now?
What tasks have been successful? What did you do that made them work? What could you apply from what you did in the past to the task at hand?
What are the obstacles to meeting this goal? What have you done to remove similar obstacles in the past? What needs to be done to remove the present impediments?
What else do you need? How best to get that?
Who else is/what other groups are impacted? What is the best way to work with them on this? What trade-offs need to be made?
What are the alternatives? What other choices are there? How do they compare with the criteria we need met?
What support do you need from whom? What is the best way to get the support or resource? What do you need to do to support someone else?
What do you need to do differently? What do you need to change? How can you improve the situation? When will you do that?
Given all we’ve talked about, what is your current plan of action? How will you keep me informed?
What questions do you have?
Summary
Expertise in asking questions leads to more organized, collegial, and productive conversations when delegating, monitoring progress, giving feedback, and coaching. The more adept the manager is at using questions in these management processes, the more each direct report will be working to his or her potential and contributing to team development.
Planning ahead and developing effective questions can boost your confidence as well as your competence. Prepared questions can help you analyze and evaluate situations factually and follow logical steps. Asking questions also draws in the direct report’s opinions and expertise and thus enhances the working relationship. Asking well-framed questions advances your direct report’s competency and confidence and thus prevents people problems while increasing collaboration.
In Chapter 6, we address how to unravel judgments when people problems do occur in spite of a manager’s best efforts at prevention.