Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:16: Pinterest
00:02:33: Building relationships, insight and learning
00:06:23: Thinking traps and positive prompts
00:08:36: Ideas for action: increase quantity and quality
00:11:22: Idea for action: different styles of question
00:12:08: Mirroring
00:12:50: Adjoining
00:13:19: Elevating
00:13:46: Deep diving
00:14:09: Curious
00:14:39: Idea for action: Not stacking questions
00:16:42: Prioritise your questions
00:18:00: Listen to yourself
00:19:14: Idea for action: watch, listen and learn
00:20:52: When to ask a question
00:23:10: Final comments

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share ideas that we hope make navigating our Squiggly Careers that little bit easier.

Helen Tupper: Today's episode is sponsored by Pinterest which we're really excited about, because we've delivered some career sessions for the Pinterest teams all across the world, and we both absolutely love using Pinterest ourselves, in and I think probably just as much out of work, so it's nice to be able to talk about a brand that we both love and use all the time.  I think we actually use it quite differently; Helen, how do you use Pinterest?

Helen Tupper: So, work-related, because obviously this is a careers podcast, so I'm totally happy to talk about all the Pinterest boards I have outside of work which are mainly like fashion and jewellery related, but workwise I think that's probably quite a surprising way that I use Pinterest.  It's really, really good to go there for inspirational quotes, whenever I'm looking for quotes for podcasts, there just seem to be a lot on there.  I found myself browsing through them quite a lot and then you can save them to different boards, so I found that quite useful.

The thing that I like is, you start looking for a quote and then you find inspirational book reviews and then you go down and just find loads of different things that you weren't expecting; that's probably the reason I really enjoy it.  What about you?  Are you searching for quotes or something else?

Helen Tupper: Not really quotes actually, I don't think, but then I probably just search for quotes anywhere.  I really like it for design, actually in and out of work, so when we're thinking about book covers, that's the first place I go to for design inspiration.  I actually really like looking at typography both for work and just generally, I find it quite interesting; and book stuff, yeah, in terms of other people sharing, a bit like you in terms of book recommendations, often they'll link through to some really good articles that you can read about my top five books on certain topics. 

I would say for me it's mainly design and less fashion and jewellery outside of work and more interiors, and I guess food; I probably used to use it for food a bit more than a I do now when I used to work for places like Sainsburys, but yeah, food and house, basically.

Helen Tupper: Actually, you could probably see how my life has evolved, with all the different boards that I have.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, through your Pinterest.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, through the different Pinterest boards that I have from like five years ago when I had slightly more time and I was doing interiors and home design, and now less so.  I do think that with Pinterest, the more time that you spend on Pinterest, I think it seems to learn about you and the more you find that ignites your curiosity.  So, if you haven't been for a while, we totally recommend spending a bit more time there because you might just surprise yourself as well with what you find.  So, for inspiration and endless things to discover, visit Pinterest today.

Sarah Ellis: This week we're talking about how to ask better questions at work.  Asking really brilliant questions is so useful as part of your job for a few reasons.  The first is that when we ask really good questions, we uncover new insights and it helps us to build relationships, so there's a lot of evidence that when we ask lots of questions, it helps to demonstrate to other people that we're prepared to be vulnerable and to not know that we're really interested, that we're curious and that increases the trust that people have in us.  So, it's sort of way of building trust which can feel quite an abstract thing to do, but this is a very practical action that you can take to build relationships.

The second thing where I think questions are really useful is, it's sort of a free and easy way to just make sure you're always learning.  Again, you know when people sort of talk about, "We need to get better at learning on the job, making learning part of our day-to-day"; we talk about that all of the time, and that can feel quite hard because we're all busy with all of our tasks and our to-do lists.  Actually, by asking more questions, that will increase your learning; it will help you to grow, help you to develop in different directions.  And people, the people that we work with in and out of our organisations, are just a great source of learning.  Asking questions is one of the ways that we glean those insights and get that new knowledge from people.

Then the last thing where questions is really helpful and again this is a really big one, I feel like all of these three things are really big benefits, is that it improves our emotional intelligence.  This is actually sort of a virtuous cycle of when we ask better questions, we become more emotionally intelligent, so have more empathy, build better connections as we've talked about.  Therefore, having more emotional intelligence also means that we get better at questioning, so it's one of those things that I think has lots of benefits that all add on top of each other.

Helen Tupper: It's sort of like asking better questions make us better people in all ways.  When I was thinking about this topic as well, one of the things that it made me think is that there are varying different skill levels that we all start with, with our ability to ask questions.  There are some people who are naturally good at it.  I actually think my husband's very good at asking questions; sometimes we'll be having a conversation and he'll really make me stop and think.  He has this really natural ability to ask sometimes quite hard and difficult questions, but he asks them really clearly and concisely.  Whereas, when I sometimes ask questions, I'm thinking and asking at the same time, and I sort of muddle a lot of questions altogether and I lose some of that clarity.

So, depending on where your questioning starting point is, it really isn't a problem because it is a skill and we can all learn to do it, and we can all learn to do it in a way that works for us, whether you are the natural interrogator or you have a sightly different style that you wish to aspire to.

Sarah Ellis: Are you now implying that your husband is a natural interrogator, because that's exactly what it sounds like?

Helen Tupper: Yes, I call it machine-gun questioning, that's what I tell him when he does it to me.

Sarah Ellis: Right, and we're saying that's a positive thing, are we?

Helen Tupper: Well, no, but what I do think is it is a talent.  I think he's in the wrong profession; he would be, like I always said that to him, he would be a brilliant lawyer because he's very calm and he bombards you with questions.  I mean I do not like being on the receiving end of it, but I do recognise the talent is there, it's not just one I would intend to inspire to.  I will ask questions in my own way and that's what we want to help you to do. 

If you ever struggle to ask questions, it is useful to reflect on why or maybe what stops you.  Sometimes it can be a thought that you should already know the answer to this question, so you might be afraid to ask it in the first place.  Sometimes you might have a fear of being a bit difficult, that gets in my way, or maybe you think it might be a bit awkward or you might slow down the progress someone else is trying to make and you don't want to do that and that might stop you.  Sometimes you think, "Well, I'm just going to wait because someone else is going to ask this question at some point, aren't they?  And maybe they're better placed to ask it than I am". 

All of those reasons stop those benefits that Sarah talked about, they stop the learning, they stop the ability to build better relationships; and we've called these blockers to your questions, "thinking traps".  When you can recognise the thinking traps that are holding you back from asking questions that could help you develop, that's actually a really good insight, because you can see and know that about yourself, but what you really want to do is to reframe them into something that we call "positive prompts".  These positive prompts are the things that help us to put our minds in a more open place to take action.  Thinking traps hold you back, positive prompts help you to move forward.

For example, let's say you've got a thinking trap about, "I won't ask a question because I think I should already know the answer".  An example of a positive prompt there could be reframing it to, "Asking a question shows I'm interested in learning from somebody else", and that's far more likely to put you into the mindset where you can actually ask the questions.  Another example of a thinking trap might be, "I won't ask a question because I don't want to be perceived as awkward or difficult", and you could reframe that to a positive prompt like, "Asking questions equals better outcomes".

Sarah Ellis: So, now we're going to move onto some ideas for action, to help you to ask better questions at work and we've got four ideas for action; but we'll warn you now, the second one has got five sub-points.  So, I can't quite work out whether we've got nine or four, but we've got kind of four big ones but the second one we're actually going to talk about lots of different styles and types of questions.  We're actually going to go through all of those and give you lots of examples, so certainly one where a pen and paper might be quite handy in a couple of minutes' time.

Helen Tupper: It will also be in the podsheet as well, so all these different types of questions we'll have, we've got a podsheet on amazingif.com which will summarise them for you.

Sarah Ellis: Idea for action one is about increasing the quantity and quality of your questions.  I think the first thing that you can do, which is just about increasing your awareness, is figure out what's your question tally; what's your typical question tally at the moment in a conversation?  There's no right or wrong that we're aiming for here, but if you're thinking, well, if Helen and I were reflecting on the one-to-one conversations that we have, and Helen was thinking, "Well, I asked ten questions and Sarah asks one question", well that's quite interesting.  That probably gives us some insight in terms of the sorts of conversations we're having, or perhaps you can start to think about different situations. 

So, do you feel comfortable and confident asking questions, maybe when you're with people you're using to working with and you feel quite familiar working with.  But, do those questions drop down a little bit if you're maybe with someone who's more senior than you or perhaps you've not worked with before?

First all of, figure out how many questions are you asking and then think about what is the quality of those questions; and typically, better-quality questions are open.  And I'm sure lots of our listeners, you'll already know about open questions, but they are essentially any question that can't be answered with a very black or white yes or no.  We also ask closed questions; I've spent lots of time learning about open questions and practising them as part of developing as a career coach, but I still sometimes ask a closed question.

My top tip on this which I find is just brilliant, it's almost like a question hack, is that if you ask a closed question, you just notice it because you'll get such a short answer.  If I said to Helen, "Have you had a good week?"  You'd probably get a "Yeah", or, "No", or, "Yeah, it's been fine", you get quite a short answer, whereas if you notice that, you can just follow up that closed question with an open one.  You can almost ask the exact same question but just start it differently so I could then say to Helen, "Tell me a bit about your week?"  If I just said that, she's got to tell me something, she's got to give me a few examples, she's got to describe it and I will just get that little bit more insight and information from her. 

So, if you ever do find yourself asking closed questions, sometimes a closed question is fine, closed questions are not bad, sometimes we do need a "Yes", or, "No", answer, we're looking for that level of somebody being definitive in their response to us.  But if you're not, if you're trying to learn more, if you need to know more, if you've got gaps in your knowledge, and you spot yourself in that closed question, just follow it up with an open one, even if you don't get to it as the next question, go back to it.  People won't notice that you're asking the same question, because it will feel different to answer because it's much more open.

Helen Tupper: Our second idea for action is all about trying out different styles of question.  As Sarah said we've got a few different styles to inspire you and as I talk these through, I'm going to give you the style and how it can help you and give you an example for each of them, but it might be useful to reflect on which of the five that I talk through you already do well; there might be some that you do often and that you think you're good at.  Also reflect on what types of questions do you hear in your organisation; I think that gives you a bit of insight into your question culture in a business.  It might give you some ideas for how you could do things a bit differently or what might feel quite hard, because you're going to do it differently; then think about which one would you like to try out.

Style number one is mirroring: this is a really useful question style to help you build relationships.  Often, we talk about mirroring in the context of body language, so if Sarah crosses her arms, I'll cross my arms, and it's quite a good way of building rapport with somebody.  A really similar outcome when you ask the same type of question.  For example, if Sarah asked me, "Helen, what are you working on at the moment?"  I would reply to that, but then I would sort of mirror that question back to her and it doesn't mean that I have to ask exactly the same question, I might say, "What are some of the things that are taking your time up this week?" or, "What are your priorities at the moment?"  But it's a really similar question played back to Sarah and it's a really good way to build relationships.

Style number two is adjoining questions: these are really good questions to help you explore connections so let's say you're talking about a project at the moment, an adjoining question could be, "Who else is impacted by this decision?" or, "Who else do we need to bring into this discussion?"  I think of these as like horizontal questions; you're thinking more broadly about who could be brought into things.

Sarah Ellis: I think of them as connecting-the-dots questions.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: Because I think you're connecting dots when you do this.

Helen Tupper: Style number three is elevating: these are the type of questions that help you to take a step back.  So, let's say you've got a group of people who are just going round and round in circles on something, an elevating question would sound something like, "What is the problem that we're trying to solve?"  It creates a bit of distance from the discussion that you might have got really deep into, so that you can maybe get to different outcomes, and you can all regroup.

Question style number four is about deep diving: these are questions that can help you understand the detail.  They sound like, "What examples can you share so that I can understand more?" or, "I'm interested in understanding a bit more, how did you get to that answer?"  These questions just help you to get to a deeper level of insight that can take a discussion to a different direction sometimes.

The fifth style is the curious style of questions: these are brilliant if you need to overcome constraints or you've got challenges where people might be getting a bit stuck.  They sound like, "How could we do this differently?"  Or, "How might we approach this from a different perspective?"  They're just about shifting people's thinking and they're really good ones to get people to open up their thoughts.

Sarah Ellis: Our third idea for action is thinking more about how many questions you ask at the same time.  So, you will get a different response if you ask one question at once versus essentially stacking lots of questions all at the same time.  So, this might be the difference between Helen and I have a conversation and saying to Helen, "Helen, talk to me a bit about what your priorities are next week and what are the challenges that are concerning you and is there anything you'd need to change or that you think I need to bear in mind at the moment?"  I can really imagine saying all of that sentence.

Basically, what you're doing is I think you're downloading everything that you want answers to all at once.  When you do that, the challenge is that the person listening to you has got to be listening incredibly well to be able to remember all of those questions, I can't remember all of those questions that I just said, so you're probably going to miss one of those questions if you ask lots at once; and also, the person responding is probably most likely to answer the last question they heard.  So, therefore, you might miss quite a lot of insight or knowledge from those other questions that could have been really, really good questions, but they get missed because you've put too many together.

If you actually start listening to people, interview people, go and listen to some of our podcasts, where we've interviewed people, we often ask too many questions at the same when we're not sure what we're trying to ask.

Helen Tupper: That's it definitely.

Sarah Ellis: Or if you get a bit nervous, I sometimes find because I just keep talking because I'm nervous, and just having the confidence to ask one question and to stop talking and to listen to the answer.  You can still get to those other questions that you've got in mind, but actually what someone might say to that first question might change your perspective, might change the order that you want to ask some of those other questions.  Or they might answer some of the other questions that you've got, and you might not need to ask those questions.

I suppose the other thing that really helps you to do this well, if you are preparing for a meeting or something where you know you're going to need to ask a few questions or you've got those in mind, perhaps a one-to-one conversation with your manager, perhaps a career conversation, I would also encourage you to prioritise your questions, because I've done this before where I've probably got three or four questions that perhaps I wanted to talk through with my manager, and I left always the scariest one until last.  

Or the one that was really most important to me but felt the hardest to say out loud, I'd leave till the end; and so inevitably what happens then is probably one of two things: you either don't ask it because you've run out of time, and you've spent too much time on the other things; or by the time you do, it's actually quite frustrating for everyone because you've got four minutes left and everybody recognises that's a really important question to you, and then it feels like you're either rushing it or you've got to come back to it.

One of the things actually that I really practised in the past probably four or five years in particular was thinking, "What is the single most important question I need to ask in this conversation?"  Make sure you ask that question first, if you can, if it feels natural and it works; but I think just having that in mind really helps you to focus your questioning.

Helen Tupper: It makes me think that sometimes, I don't know whether we're in a fortunate or an unfortunate position, but we get to listen back to ourselves asking people questions, because sometimes I will listen to our podcast and I will hear myself asking questions and I'll be like, "That was a good question", or I'll, "Helen, that was a really badly worded question that you asked.  You did a lot of questions all at once". 

I think there is some really useful insight you can get from listening to yourself asking questions, and so one thing that you might be able to do is record yourself.  If you're working remotely at the moment, and you're doing a meeting, it might be a bit obvious if you suddenly click the record button; but what you could do is put record on your phone.  So that could be something that you could listen back to afterwards and almost just evaluate what was the quality of your questioning.  Was it clear; was it multiple questions at once; or was it one at once?

Or if that feels a bit strange, you can maybe ask someone to give you feedback on your questioning, "How did I come across when I was asking questions in those meetings?  How clear were my questions?"  Just gather a bit of feedback so that you can understand what your starting point is here, in terms of whether you're asking one clear question at once or whether you are falling into that trap of asking multiple questions for whatever reason that might be.

Our last idea for action is to watch, listen and learn from other people.  When I say, "Watch", something like Question Time I always think is a really, really great way to watch people asking different questions.  Sometimes some of those styles might resonate with you, sometimes they antagonise you; I find I'm like, "Don't ask that question that way", but it's a really good learning environment. 

I actually think podcasts, particularly where people are interviewing people is a really good format to learn questioning styles from.  Personally, I really like Elizabeth Day's questioning style, I think she has a really nice pace; that's what I like about her questions, she asks with empathy, and she has a really nice pace.  She does the one question at once and she asks really hard questions, often quite emotional questions to people, but because she does it in the tone that she uses, and the pace is quite a nice slow pace.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, she's quite considered, isn't she?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, considered and consistent actually and I think that that really starts to unlock trust in a conversation, so then people actually start to reveal more.  But you only get to these insights about, "Oh maybe it's consistency and maybe it's pace and maybe it's tone"; you only get to those insights when you start listening to other people's styles and hearing what works.  So, I definitely think about two or three people, maybe quite different styles of questioning that you think, "I'm going to listen to them or I'm going to watch them, and then I'll think about what they do and why it works for them" and the I guess the question is, "What do I want to take onboard from their approach that might work for me?"

Sarah Ellis: Another point we wanted to make just to finish the conversation, just less an idea for action but just something to reflect on, is when is the right moment is to ask a question?  Sometimes we ask lots of questions in the here and now, we don't know a question is coming and we are put on the spot, and that’s fine; that can work really well and when you're trying to react and move at pace and move quickly.  Some people also really enjoy the spontaneity of conversations with lots of questions, and then I think there are some questions where if you want to get the best possible quality response, you need to give people time to think.  I think the reason Helen and I were both talking about this is because we recognise that I am definitely a time to think person.

So, Helen has kind of figured out that if she wants really good thinking from me, the best thing she can do is give me a question and then almost leave me with that question, because I'll never let it go.  Then by the time I come back to Helen with, "I've really thought about this, this is my perspective or here are my thoughts", just the quality of my response will be so much higher versus if Helen just said to me, "Can we just spend five minutes thinking/talking about this thing?"  I'll think, "But if you gave me till the end of the day to think about it, that five minutes would be time much better spent".

Then I would say, "Helen, you're pretty good on the spot, you always seem quite comfortable, you're slightly more happy to kind of riff and just say what's on your mind I would say".

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I think it's a mixture of a personal approach, you like thinking, I like doing, so I think that’s probably why I really don't want to take a question away.  I'm like, "Get it done, I'll do it now".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think you'd be like, "Well, why are we not sorting this?"

Helen Tupper: "Let's sort it out right now!"  So I think it's a personal thing, but I also think it's the type of questions.  I think there are some quick questions and there are some considered questions.  "Sarah, what do you want to do with the future of our business?"  That is a considered question.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: "Sarah, what are you going to have for dinner tonight", probably a bit quicker, so I think having --

Sarah Ellis: "I don't know, I've been giving it quite a lot of thought already today".

Helen Tupper: Don't think about it, oh my gosh.

Sarah Ellis: It is a Friday, it's Friday, it's treat night, so it takes a lot of thought.

Helen Tupper: It's always a thinking question for Sarah, but maybe just have a think when you're asking your questions, who are you asking them to and is it a quick or a considered question; unless you're asking them to Sarah, and it's always going to be considered!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but I think we all have to adapt, right.  I think that's probably the other point here is going, "We don't have the luxury of always being able to create the conditions to work in a way that 100% suits us all of the time.  That's not realistic and if we did that, you'd just be doing stuff the whole time, I'd be thinking the whole time and it would be weird; our company would be weird; but I think it's recognising our personal preferences but also knowing when you need to adapt.  It's like I definitely recognise there are moments where I think, "This is not the time to think about this for a day, we need to make a decision and we need to move forward".

I sometimes then think, "Knowing then maybe why you're finding that a bit harder, is just going, 'Oh this is because I'm having to stretch a little bit'".  Susan Cain who wrote Quiet she often talks about imagining yourself a bit like a rubber band.  A rubber band at rest is you as your most comfortable and confident and so me being asked a question that I have time to think about, that's me, my rubber band at rest.  Me being put on the spot, and it's under pressure and you've got to make a decision, I know I can do it, but that rubber band is just stretching.  It just feels a bit more uncomfortable, you're just a bit further from your comfort zone and that's I think a good way to think about it.  So, it doesn't mean you can't do it, just knowing it will perhaps just feel a little bit harder.

Helen Tupper: So, we hope that that has given you lots of different things to reflect on in terms of questions.  Maybe the things that you do well at the moment, the things that you want to try out, the things that you could observe in other people, maybe some feedback that you could ask on your own questioning style.

Sarah Ellis: I've learned a lot from this one.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, me too, I've thought about things that we can do for each other as well.

Sarah Ellis: I mean I think I always learn but this one you know when you feel like, "Yeah", not something you spend a lot of time thinking about.

Helen Tupper: We've got the podsheet as well, so as we mentioned earlier lots of the things, the different techniques and some different coaching questions for you to reflect on, will all be on the podsheet and you can just get that from amazingif.com, find where the podcasts are on our website, and you'll be able to get -- and download that podsheet.

Next week I will be talking to Sophie Williams for the last in our current Ask the Expert series.  Sophie and I are going to be talking about the topic of progression.  Sophie was one of the people that was speaking at the same TEDx event as us earlier in the year, and she talked about progression in that TEDx talk and she talked about something called the glass ceiling and the particular challenges that women and actually race can play into progression.  We talk about some of those elements as well as progression more broadly in that podcast episode so hopefully you'll have listened to some of our other Ask the Expert conversations and you'll just us for that one too.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you so much for listening, as always if you have two minutes to rate us, review us, subscribe, share it with someone else, we really appreciate it.  It makes a massive difference to us, not only because it gives us those little moments of joy in a week, but it is how other people discover us and we can keep scaling Squiggly and all things Squiggly Careers.  Loads of you have already done that, so if you already have, thank you; we love it and I love reading them and we're always screenshotting them to each other.  If you're thinking, "I'm meaning to get around to that", perhaps if you could we'd really really appreciate it.  Other than that, that's all from us for this week, thanks so much for listening and we'll speak to you again soon, bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.