SBS Blog > The advantage of asking better questions in business by David Steinberg

The advantage of asking better questions in business

By David Steinberg - Posted on 8 March 2017

Great managers ask great questions. David C. Steinberg is leading a Strathclyde Business School Masterclass on March 22 on how to ask better questions in business. Here, he looks into the importance of doing so.

Questions are not just for journalists or detectives; asking the right questions in business can lead to real business advantage, whatever the industry or business specialisation.

With the approaching waves of automation, and many jobs at high risk of automation in the next one or two decades, people in business are becoming increasingly vulnerable – particularly in finance where large amounts of time are spent on data work.

Business people need to develop social intelligence, defined by Oxford Martin School researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne as skills associated with “social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion and providing care.”

Asking questions is a key part of developing social intelligence. Doing so – and listening to the answers – is a way of gaining insight into others’ working practices, as well as being a means of sparking new ideas and new ways of working, and is also an excellent way to build rapport and avert potential problems.

Instead of accepting things at face value questioning can, for instance, lead to problems being uncovered, better data being uncovered or insights gleaned in to a company’s way of working that might not otherwise have been revealed, all of which has benefits for the questioner and his or her own business environment.

To find out more, read the full article written by David Steinberg in BizEd Magazine. More information on our Masterclass programme is available here.