How to ask great questions: Five tips for managers

All managers should have great techniques for asking good questions. But in the information age, this skill isn’t as well honed as it should be; a lot of the things we need to know are findable at the stroke of a few keys now. And in the hybrid office, there’s much less casual questioning. We’ve simply got out of the habit of asking efficient and effective questions. 

That’s bad news, say the management thinkers. Take sales guru Tony Robbins: “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” 

But it’s another guru, Dale Carnegie, who nails it for team leaders: “Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable; it often stimulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused it to be issued.”

Knowing how to ask a question can help you hire the right candidate or evaluate how well someone has understood something, for example. Without this crucial skill, you massively reduce opportunities for valuable interpersonal engagement, too, particularly within your teams’ wellbeing and personal development – so you can’t afford to fudge the volume and effectiveness of question technique.