Day 263 (Two-Hundred & Sixty-Three) of 365 days
Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own 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 among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
Innovation is impossible without questioning. The seed of innovation is curiosity. Curiosity must express itself in questioning. Spend some time with a young child who is discovering the world at an amazing rate. How is their curiosity expressed? Through questioning of course – oftentimes through relentless questioning. “Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? How does the bird know what song to sing? Why do dogs lick you when they are happy to see you? How come a cat’s nose is rough? How come daddies have whiskers and mommies don’t?”
Curiosity leads to questioning, questioning leads to discovery, discovery leads to innovation. Without asking questions we will never move forward. When we ask good questions – when we engage in the process of inquiry – we move forward to new understanding and produce new accomplishments. We must be willing to question the questions we are asking to ensure we are asking appropriate questions to effectively address the issues we are facing. And, sometimes we need to ask ourselves why we aren’t asking more questions. We need to question why we are perhaps unwilling to question what is going on.
Asking the right question is at the heart of effective communications and information exchange. By using the right questions in a particular situation, you can improve a whole range of communications skills. For example, you can gather better information and learn more, you can build stronger relationships, manage people more effectively, and help others learn too.
