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ASK QUALITY QUESTIONS
Isn’t it annoying when people don’t really listen to what we’re saying? There’s
the “mm-hmm” conversation, when the person we’re talking to is obviously
thinking his or her own thoughts—sometimes coupled with a dash of
smartphone eye-flicking. There are times when the other person just talks and
talks, leaving the exchange feeling distinctly one-sided. There’s the “I know
exactly what you mean” brigade, who are desperate to make clear that nothing
you’re experiencing is unique. And then there are the many routine
conversations where both of you are just skating on the surface, exchanging
autopilot pleasantries.
Unfortunately, we’re all a little like this. Our heads are full of our own
concerns most of the time, leaving us with less space to contemplate where other
people are coming from. In fact, our brain’s automatic system saves a lot of
mental effort by using the shortcut of assuming that other people are fairly
similar to us. Not identical, obviously. But we tend to assume that others share
our preferences and perspectives, and that everyone understands and values
things just as we do. This
projection bias
, as scientists call it, means that we
don’t always listen that closely to what others are saying. And if we’re thinking
about what we’re going to say next, that diverts even more attention away from
what the other person is saying, as we pause to reload our next salvo of
comments and ideas.
None of this is great for rapport. If you recall the last time you had a
conversation that made you feel you’d deeply connected with someone, chances
are that it involved the other person showing some real curiosity about your life
or your views. He or she probably gave you space to talk and made you feel
heard. Being invited to share your thoughts and experience makes you feel
interesting. All of this provides wonderful rewards for a social brain.
And research bears this out. In a recent experiment, Harvard psychologists
Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell gave volunteers small cash rewards for
answering three types of questions: factual ones (e.g., “Leonardo da Vinci
painted the
Mona Lisa
, true or false?”), invitations to speculate about other
people (e.g., “How much does the president of the United States enjoy winter
sports such as skiing?”), and opportunities to offer their own views about a
subject (e.g., “How much do you enjoy winter sports such as skiing?”). In
general, people preferred to talk about themselves—to the point that they
willingly gave up money to do so, since the cash reward for talking about
yourself was 17 percent lower than the other two options. By looking at brain
scans, the researchers confirmed that talking about their own likes and dislikes
activated the volunteers’ neural reward systems, while speculating about the
likes and dislikes of
other
people failed to have the same effect.
1
So if we show some real curiosity about other people, they’re going to find it
rewarding to talk to us. And that’s a fine footing for a good conversation. What
does it mean to show real curiosity, though? Does it just involve asking
questions? Well, that’s a start. But it’s not the whole answer, because most
questions don’t convey real interest in the other person. If you listen hard to your
next group conversation at work, you’ll notice that most of the questions that get
asked are one of three types: they’re superficially oiling the wheels (“Did you
have a good weekend?” “Yes, you?”), they’re factual inquiries (“How long till
launch date?”), or they’re platforms for conveying a hypothesis (“Have you
thought of XYZ?” “Could you make things better by delegating more?” “Is the
reason you’re struggling because this is all new to you?”). We mean to be
helpful when we’re asking this sort of question, but our focus is to get our ideas
across rather than find out what’s in the other person’s head.
The kind of question that signals genuine curiosity is quite different. First, it’s
an open question—one that can’t be answered with a yes or a no. Second, it
invites people to share their thoughts, motivations, or feelings, rather than
merely facts. Third, you actually intend to listen and reflect on the answer. I call
them “quality questions” because they immediately shift the quality of a
conversation. For example:
Not “Have you thought of XYZ?” but “How are you thinking about this?”
Not “Is the reason you’re struggling because this is all new to you?” but
“What’s making it feel hard?”
Not “Could you make things better by delegating more?” but “What would
the ideal situation look like for you?”
And if you want to ask about people’s personal lives, you could get beyond
the normal “How was your weekend?” with a question like “What do you do
outside work? How did you develop an interest in that?”
All of which can be followed with a simple invitation to share more, before
you jump in with your own comments. Merely by saying “Tell me more about
that,” you’ll be in the top percentile of listeners that anyone will meet today.
2
Peter is on a mission to replace all his “here’s my smart hypothesis” questions
with quality questions that show true interest in his clients. It didn’t work
immediately. In a recent meeting with a new prospective client, Peter
remembered to start by asking some questions to get to know the guy. But, he
said, “I wasn’t getting any interesting answers! That rattled me, and so I quickly
defaulted to my old approach and started to deluge the client with my ideas.”
Which didn’t go so well. “He looked dazed and overwhelmed, and the meeting
kind of fizzled out.” In retrospect, Peter realized that his questions were “still
quite superficial. They were either yes-no questions or just fact-gathering about
his career. And I wasn’t really listening to the answers. I was just waiting to tell
him what I knew.”
I asked Peter when he’d found it easiest to show genuine curiosity in recent
conversations. He remembered an occasion when a meeting with an Italian client
had been rescheduled so many times that by the time they met, there were no
longer any pressing issues to discuss. As a result of having no fixed agenda for
the meeting, Peter realized, he’d found it easy to ask genuine questions about his
client’s business and personal life, and to pay attention to the answers. Sure
enough, the client sent a note afterward saying that it was one of the best
professional conversations he could remember ever having.
Peter decided he could replicate the conditions of that meeting with other
people, too. He wrote himself a list of reminders:
Don’t be too attached to a personal agenda (trust that you’ll eventually find
an opportunity to share your thoughts).
Decide to find the other person interesting in some way.
Ask truly open questions, rather than making suggestions masquerading as
questions.
Properly listen to the answer. Notice what seems most striking, and ask more
about that.
With all that in mind, Peter got back in touch with the client he’d
overwhelmed. “I apologized for having talked
at
him before, and told him I
wanted to find out more about his thinking. And when I saw him, I took this
completely different approach, asking real questions. I was surprised how it was
possible to get back on track after that bad start. But it worked fine after I
changed tack.”
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