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How to ask better questions

June 25, 2009 | Hospitality Industry

Here is a framework from Harvard Business for asking the right questions at the right time to create clarity and agreement around issues and to empower your direct reports.

The word “empower” gets bandied about so much that one could be forgiven for overlooking what it actually means: to imbue someone with power, to instill in the individual a sense of his own strength and efficacy. “When the boss asks for a subordinate’s ideas, he sends the message that they are good — perhaps better than his. The individual gains confidence and becomes more competent,” says Michael J. Marquardt, a professor of human resources and international affairs at George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) and author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

But an empowering question does more than convey respect for the person to whom it’s posed. It actually encourages that person’s development as a thinker and problem solver, thereby delivering both short-term and long-term value: the short-term value of generating a solution to the issue at hand and the long-term value of giving subordinates the tools to handle similar issues in the future independently.

A disempowering question, on the other hand, undercuts the confidence of the person to whom it’s asked and sabotages her performance. Often, these types of questions focus on failure or betray that the questioner has an agenda.

Get the full story at Harvard Business Publishing

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