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Asking Questions

Course video 27 of 37

This module was designed to teach you both the key principles of effective communication, and how to harness the power of setting goals to improve your performance. You’ll learn how to create memorable and persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages. You'll also learn the how to use goal setting for maximum benefit while avoiding the common pitfalls of overly ambitious targets. By the end of this module, you'll be able to communicate effectively using the right medium, and use goal-setting to increase your productivity and boost your performance.

Improving Communication Skills

宾夕法尼亚大学

课程 2（共 4 门，Achieving Personal and Professional Success 专项课程）

Learn how to communicate more effectively at work and achieve your goals. Taught by award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author Maurice Schweitzer, Improving Communications Skills is an essential course designed to give you both the tools you need to improve your communication skills, and the most successful strategies for using them to your advantage. You'll learn how to discover if someone is lying (and how to react if they are), how to develop trust, the best method of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. You'll also learn when to cooperate and when to compete, how to create persuasive messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and choose the right medium (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) for your messages. By the end of the course, you'll be able to understand what others want, respond strategically to their wants and needs, craft convincing and clear messages, and develop the critical communication skills you need to get ahead in business and in life.

查看授课大纲

您将学习的技能

goal setting, Communication, Negotiation, Deception

教学方

Maurice Schweitzer
Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions

脚本

A second key goal of our communication is to gather information.

And we do that often by asking questions.

And it turns out that sometimes just asking for it, as Linda Babcock would say,

just asking for it is sometimes the most important step.

So, here's a story about the University of Chicago.

They received $1 million grant from Mrs.

Field from the Marshall Field Department Store fame,

and administrators at Northwestern were shocked.

After all, Mrs. Field lived in Evanston.

She had been a supporter in the past of Northwestern.

And when they reached out to Mrs.

Field, they asked why'd you give this money to Chicago?

And she replied, well the people of the University of Chicago asked and

you didn't.

So asking for information or help are often key goals.

And it turns out that when we look at, for example skilled versus average

negotiators, we see this big divergence in asking questions.

Often we think that one of the key goals is to just convey our winning arguments or

to convey all the great information we have in our own heads.

But it turns out that

what's really important often is just asking good questions.

So Neil Rackham did this study with over 100 labor negotiators.

And he had experts and

relative novices and he recorded and compared their negotiations.

And one of the most important things he found and

he assessed expertise based upon peers and counterparts assessments,

he found that the expert negotiators spent way more time asking questions.

So they're doing things like asking questions, they're testing their

understanding, like I'm going to make sure I understand what you're saying,

they're demonstrating concern for the other party as well.

But they're spending time doing that and the key idea here is sort of asking

questions, and they're spending way less time engaging in other behaviors,

including just reviewing information, but also engaging things like irritators,

like saying things that are a little bit annoying to the other side,

or putting down the other side, or attacking the other side.

And they're offering fewer justifications for their key ideas.

So when they're saying, here's why we need higher wages, or here's why

we need better insurance coverage, they're offering one or two reasons.

The less expert negotiators are offering more reasons.

So what's interesting here, the key idea is that experts are asking more questions,

and they're conveying a little bit less information,

and they're being more effective because of it.

So one of the key ideas, and what I suggests is that sometimes we should be

focused on asking questions and really listening to

those answers rather than focusing on trying to just get our ideas out.

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