Asking Questions Can Get You a Better Job or a Second Date
New research suggests that people who ask questions, particularly
follow-up questions, may become better managers, land better jobs, and even win
second dates.
“Compared to those who do not ask many
questions, people who do are better liked and learn more information from their
conversation partners,” says Alison Wood Brooks, assistant professor and
Hellman Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School. “This strategy does both.
It’s an easy-to-deploy strategy anyone can use to not only
be perceived as more emotionally intelligent, but to actually be more
emotionally intelligent as well.”
The research, published in the paper It
Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking,
examined data from online chats and face-to-face speed dating conversations. In
addition to Brooks, the coauthors were Karen Huang, HBS and Department of
Psychology, Harvard University; Michael Yeomans, Institute for Quantitative
Social Science, Harvard University; Julia Minson, Harvard Kennedy School; and
Francesca Gino, Harvard Business School. It was published in
September’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The first two studies in the paper examined
more than 600 online chat participants tasked with getting to know each other.
A third study consisted of 110 speed-daters engaged in round-robin dates—over
2,000 conversations.
In all three studies, those who asked
follow-up questions were better liked than those who didn’t. “Follow-up
questions are an easy and effective way to keep the conversation going and show
that the asker has paid attention to what their partner has said,” the
researchers write.
Researchers study 2,000 conversations
In the first two studies, people were
assigned a random partner and told to chat for 15 minutes in order to get to
know each other. In the first study, one person in each pair was told to ask at
least nine questions or at most four questions, and the other person was
unaware of his or her partner’s question-asking instructions. In the next
study, both people in each pair were told to ask many (at least nine) or few
(at most four) questions.
Nine research assistants read through a
sample of 368 transcripts and identified question types. They discovered and
hand-labeled six different types of questions: introductory, mirror,
full-switch, partial-switch, follow-up, and rhetorical questions. Forty-four
percent of the questions—more than any other type—were follow-ups.
Based on the hand-labeled question types, the
research team was able to create its own machine learning algorithm,
natural-language-processing software to analyze the speed dating conversations.
For the third study, armed with their algorithm, they examined data from a 2013
Stanford speed dating study called Detecting friendly, flirtatious,
awkward and assertive speech in speed dates as a way to
test in-person interaction.
And there, perhaps, was revealed the ultimate
proof that follow-up questions work. The top third of question askers got the
most second dates. Researchers found that if a participant were to ask
just one more question on each of the 20 dates, he or she would
succeed in getting a “yes I want to see you again” on one more of the dates, on
average.
Be careful, though. Asking too many questions
can have the reverse effect, the research shows. “Asking a barrage of questions
without disclosing information about yourself may come across as guarded, or
worse, invasive,” Brooks says.
Brooks, who has been fascinated by “why
people don’t ask more questions” since grade school, has mulled over this topic
in many discussions with her mother, whom she thanks in the study. “My mom, a
talented natural psychologist, and I would often reflect on why people don’t
ask more questions. What holds them back?”
One reason might be ego. People may be so
focused on sharing what they know that they aren’t considering what they might
learn from others. Or, they may think to ask a question, but are afraid of
asking one that is perceived as rude, intrusive, or incompetent.
But, there’s a third, darker reason.
Potential questioners, such as a manager, may not ask because they don’t care
about the answers—they may feel apathy or disinterest in what the other person
has to say.
“This type of apathy is often misplaced—we
have much to learn from others, perhaps especially from those lower in status
than ourselves,” Brooks says.
“Every workplace has norms and rules of
conduct, explicit and implicit. There are rules of appropriateness. And rules
of professionalism,” Brooks says. “It is possible that we are more likely to
make conversational mistakes at work and violate these rules and norms and
expectations.”
A job interview is one circumstance that may
benefit from asking more questions. For example, standard practice suggests
that a potential new boss is expected to do the asking. But asking more
questions as a job candidate may show how much you can contribute in a
potential job, that you are an engaging listener with high emotional
intelligence. Plus, the manager may like you more.
“We don’t have many evidence-based
prescriptions about what you can do to become more emotionally intelligent or
to take other people’s perspectives,” Brooks says. "In fact, there’s
research that shows even if you tell people, ‘try to put yourself in other
person’s shoes,’ we aren’t very good at it.”
The right way to question
For those who aren’t natural question-askers,
Brooks recommends heading into any conversation with an explicit goal of asking
questions.
“Think to yourself, I need to ask at least
five questions in this conversation, or, I need to ask questions in this
conversation, listen to the answers, and ask follow-up questions. It’s easy to
do, and—even better—requires almost no preparation.”
The researchers are interested in looking at
other areas, now that they’ve established a link between question-asking and
liking.
Potential areas include: What happens in
extreme situations when someone asks zero questions, or, when they ask 50? What
can be gleaned about gender, status, age, or personality from question-asking
in conversation? What can be learned from groups in terms of productivity or
happiness when it comes to question asking?
by Rachel Layne
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/asking-questions-can-get-you-a-better-job-or-a-second-date?cid=spmailing-17470619-WK%20Newsletter%2011-01-2017%20(1)%20B-November%2001,%202017
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