Top Highlights

• Patricia Corsi, the chief marketing, digital, and information officer at Bayer Consumer Health, told us, “As your career progresses, you’re offered riskier moves, into jobs you’ve never done, domains you don’t know, and challenges you’ve never experienced….[People] gamble on your ability to ask the questions that will help you learn.”
• One HR specialist finds that “Why?” questions sometimes trigger resistance and that a simple change to “How come…?” gets better results.
• “Your tone often matters more than the question. People sometimes assume you’re testing them.” Problems of interpretation are exacerbated in virtual meetings, where intention is harder to assess; you can’t be sure how your question has landed. “Without the full body cues of in-person meetings, leaders have to lean even more strongly into asking the...
• Team members may have a shared blind spot. If that’s the case, try assigning one question type to each member—at least until the group’s collective repertoire is reasonably well balanced.

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