6 Ways to Improve Your Questioning Skills as a Manager

Having good questioning skills as a manager gives you a massive advantage in doing your job so I am explaining 6 ways to improve your questioning skills as a manager.  Improving your questioning skills leads to so many benefits for you personally. You gain a better understanding of the problems you face, get to know your team members better, find out a whole lot more about what is really going on to name a few.  So the first way to improve your question techniques is to know your purpose before asking questions. You will then be able to structure your questions a lot better and use the different question types to achieve your aims.  Second, when developing questioning skills, think carefully about your audience. The art of asking the right questions for a given situation always includes thought about who you are asking questions to. Use their language, take into action their knowledge, skills and interests.  The way to improve your questioning skills is to manage your voice and body language carefully. 93% of how words are interpreted come from the non-verbal communication you are projecting. Pay careful attention to what you are communicating.  Fourth, to improve your questioning skills, suspend your judgement for as long as possible. Keep an open mind and really listen to what you are being told in answer to your question. This increases the effort of the other person and increases your understanding and appreciation of their position.  Fifth, when questioning others, get comfortable with and learn to use silence.  Giving the other person enough thinking time without interrupting is essential to getting good answers. Plus silence encourages the other person to answer.  When thinking about how to ask better questions, use active listening and aim for action. Active listening will give you a host of non-verbal clues about the other person and you can adapt your questioning based on these. Good questions, generally initiate action – either getting the other person thinking or acting. I also take you through 7 different types of questions giving you examples and brief explanations of when to use each question.