Asking Questions in the Workplace

In my last article I talked about how to avoid asking and answering stupid questions.  This time I will go over a few simple tips in how to ask good questions.  Again, for this article we are just going to concentrate asking for help and information in the workplace.

Here are some tips to asking a good question/request in the office place:

• Ask explicit questions:  Open-ended questions are open ended time-sucks. People at your office will recognize this and if they are smart, will try to avoid wasting their time.  An explicit question allows the person you asking to put an upper bound on the time and energy needed to fulfill the request. It also gives them a finite target to focus their efforts.
• Show some effort:  If you are asking a question, show you that you took some time to try to figure it out yourself and are really at an impasse.  Before asking a question, go through the steps you took.  This also helps them avoid trying things you already tried.
• Ask the right person:  People will blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order to try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in irrelevance.
• Don’t overuse “It’s an emergency”: Your failure to plan does not constitute somebody else’s emergency.  This is true even if you are the boss, it just points out what a poor boss you are.  If you claim everything is an emergency when seeking help, it will diminish your returns when you are really in a bind.
• Be Nice:  Make it clear that you are truly thankful for people spending their time to help you with your issue.  Some common courtesy still goes a long way.

The workplace is a balancing act of personalities.  Although you may be friends with a lot of people at work, odds are that unless you own the company, you did not choose the people with which you work.  Because of this, you will need to change the way you interact with each person to maximize your effectiveness.  The above items are only guidelines.  In future postings I will delve deeper into dealing with different personalities.