The Essentials: Asking Purposeful Questions

Women at Work

Harvard Business Review

Entrepreneurship, Workplace, Business/management, Business/entrepreneurship, Progress, Resources, Gender, Equality, Business/careers, Women, Hbr, Careers, Management, Business, Harvard, Human

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Purposeful questions do more than clarify details—they reveal how you think and demonstrate leadership potential. Amy Gallo talks with a program manager looking to strengthen her executive presence and question-asking skills. Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks joins them to offer research-backed guidance on eliciting useful responses, building credibility through questions, and adapting to different conversational settings.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
0:05.1	I'm Amy Bernstein.
0:06.7	And I'm Amy Gallo.
0:07.9	This is our Essentials series where we explore key career skills and make management advice,
0:13.3	practical and relatable.
0:15.2	We do that by bringing together experts on those skills and audience members who want to get better at them.
0:28.5	Okay, Amy B, I have been in many meetings with you over the years, and you are particularly good at asking purposeful questions.
0:30.2	What do you mean by that, Amy?
0:36.0	Purposeful questions have a clear purpose. They're intentional.
0:40.3	And they also are clear in that we know exactly what you're getting at. They have impact. They should elucidate a point or they should move the conversation forward in some way.
0:48.3	And they invite openness rather than defensiveness.
0:53.3	I just want to note here that these are the same traits that you see in executive presence.
1:00.0	They come from confidence and draw on your emotional intelligence, your ability to read the room.
1:06.0	Yeah.
1:07.0	That actually ties really well into why our audience member slash guest volunteered for this episode.
1:15.2	Her name is Megan.
1:16.9	I'll let her introduce herself.
1:18.8	I am a program manager in a biotech company, and I've been in a staff level role for, oh gosh, it's probably been like four years.
1:31.8	I ask questions that I'm super comfortable asking.
1:35.8	And those can be questions that focus on the execution of a particular task or deliverable.
1:42.4	Megan's looking to advance, maybe through a promotion, maybe by working in a different
1:47.0	part of the business.
	...

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