Tête-à-tête: asking the right questions

povetkina_nastenka February 22, 2017 at 22:51

Tête-à-tête: asking the right questions

Tutorial

To successfully build work in a team (team) and achieve high results, it is important to be able to communicate productively with subordinates and ask the right questions. Professionalism consists not only in finding the right time, place and moment for a conversation with an employee, but also in obtaining and communicating the necessary information.

If you are on the way to holding regular individual meetings with an employee or already practice them, but don’t know what else to ask, our article will be useful! Below you will find a list of questions, the answers to which will help improve teamwork, increase company loyalty, find out the problems that concern your colleagues. This selection should be not so much a ready-made wording for you as a designation of the direction, based on which you can formulate more accurate and appropriate questions, taking into account the personal characteristics of the interlocutor, the features of work in your company.

I divided questions for individual meetings into 5 groups :

Small Talk
Personal issues;
Design issues;
Retrospective issues;
Questions about work in the company.

The following are examples of questions from each group:

Small talk

Contact with a person is better to start with small talk - this is a relaxed conversation on abstract topics, during which we get a lot of non-verbal information: subconsciously analyze a person’s posture in space, timbre and pace of speech, posture, mood, general mood. For this, we need an easy, at first glance, meaningless conversation. Start your conversation with conversations about the weather, transport, compliment your colleague, and discuss briefly recent events.

Personal questions

These are questions that allow you to get to know the employee better, understand what motivates him and what doesn’t, help solve his problems, get timely information on the current interaction. I advise you to start with the question "What would you like to discuss at a meeting?" This will help to discuss the most important situations, clarify some points, listen to the painful. Examples of personal questions:

Are you satisfied with your professional results?
How do you see your development, do you see yourself further as a signor, technical team of the project, curator of the direction, manager?
Is it possible to organize your work optimally? (You can offer the employee various time management tools or a change in the work schedule (schedule), depending on the answers received)
When did you like to work on a task / project, and what exactly did you like?
What motivates you at work?
What are your most productive hours at work?
Is there something, someone that distracts you (the music of a neighbor, a draft ...)?
When and in what form is it more convenient to ask you? (at any time / warn in advance that I will come / agree in advance about the time of the meeting and discuss everything on it / it is better to write everything in the chat)
What do you read / study in your free time?
Do you know who can recommend this or that useful book to you?
Would you like to take courses, trainings or attend a conference in any area?
What would you like to participate in? (hackathons, writing articles, speaking at conferences, etc.)
Do you plan to take prof. testing in your area?
How can I help you to work better (describe tasks better, come and communicate live more often, involve your supervisor / technical leader / etc.)?
Do you have problems with equipment and workplace equipment?
Do you have the opportunity to work from home at the request of the manager, is the equipment configured?
What is the best way to communicate positive and negative feedback to you so that we better build interaction?
Can you list the moments when your work was underestimated?
Can you list the moments when your work has been overestimated?
Do you have any acquaintances / friends who would like to work with us or whom you can advise?

It is important to subtly feel the distinction between personal space and professional interest, to understand the extent to which you “received a loan of trust from a person”, and what issues it can perceive as an invasion of personal life and personal space.

Design Issues

These are issues related to the immediate activities of the employee at the moment. In our case, design issues. After receiving answers to these questions and retrospective questions about the project, you can improve performance.

What do you think of the XXX project?
What are the goals of our project?
Are there any alternatives to this project that are easy to implement? (Sometimes other solutions are possible, which will require lower costs than our project)
Do you like working with Trello / Jira / Youtrack / any other task tracker?
How clear am I describing tasks in XXX, and are testers describing bugs? Are personal explanations often required?
Are you satisfied with our daily / weekly / monthly reports? Do you see the point in them?
In what form would you like to receive Terms of Reference or other project documentation?
Do you use the experience of past projects in current? Why?
Do you ask your colleagues if the solution was chosen correctly, do you consult with them? If so, from whom?
Who, in your opinion, writes code / solves assigned tasks better than you? Why?
Who in your opinion writes the code worse than you? How could you help him?
Do you think I, as a manager, interact well with the team?
Do you think there is something that I can improve in working with our client?
Is it important for you to hear customer / end-user feedback about your work?

Retrospective issues

Retrospective questions allow us to collect feedback on the project or current work of the employee, as well as to obtain information to study the development prospects of the employee and the whole company.

For project activities:

What has been done well in the XXX project, and what would you like to improve? What needs to be done to improve this?
What difficulties were in project XXX, and what was easier than in previous projects?
Do you think we have chosen Jenkins / Fabric / other services successfully?
Why do you think we went out / we managed not to get out of the planned labor costs?
Do you find rewriting easier than understanding someone else’s code?
Do you like working in a team or on the project yourself?
Do you think that a team should participate in demonstrating results to a client and answer customer questions together with the manager?
Do you think the retrospective process is useful? how often should it be done?
Have you read retrospectives on past projects? Used any of them?

For company processes:

Have you ever written suggestions for improving processes in the company, how was it evaluated?
What processes, in your opinion, require improvement?
Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the interaction between the departments of development, testing, design, administration, etc.?
How to improve the interaction between senior and junior programmers / testers / designers?
How to improve the evaluation of projects? How to get into the grade?
How do you think it is more competent to evaluate and control the code?
Comparing our company with others, what do you think we are missing?

Company Issues

This is a set of questions that directly relates to the interaction of the employee and the company. By hearing and solving the problems of employees, you can significantly increase their loyalty.

Do you understand the company's course?
What are your positive aspects in the work of the company?
Are you satisfied with your growth in the company?
You see, you have growth prospects in our company?
Do you think that we have a well-established interaction between people?
What do you think account managers / Sales / and others do?
In your opinion, does a manager help you solve problems? Are there any problems that your manager cannot solve?
Do you think that the processes in the company are fair (as an example, getting on the honors board, issuing bonuses, etc.), are they clear to you?
Do you know how the council / department / etc. can help in your work?
What do you think can help the staff service?
Would you approach the CEO personally with a problem, if not, why not?
Do you think the company manages to create a cozy and emotional atmosphere in the office?
Can you relax in the rest room?
Do you wish your colleagues a happy birthday?
Do you know about the company library?
Do you know that sports in our company are partially paid / fully paid / have a gym?
What ways of motivation do you see in the company, which could be added?
What is the best way to explain to an employee that he is mistaken?
Do you know about regulations / coding styles / job descriptions and where can I get them?
Do you find it fair to keep track of hours in the company?
Do you plan to increase the number of working hours? (at partial bid)
Who do you think is the technical leader of the project?
What project of the company would you like to know more about?
Would you go on a business trip to another city / country?
Do you study English? Why not? / How is it going?
Do you attend (company events)? Why do you think they are being held?
Do you read weekly reports / newsletters / magazines from departments / the whole company? What is most interesting? Why?
Are you interested in taking part in employee training, conducting courses / lectures?

Total

It is important that the communication was conducted in a friendly atmosphere with a minimum of distracting factors: from the conversations of colleagues behind their backs to the suddenly ringing cell phone. It is ideal to use specialized meeting rooms , if, of course, those are available. Send an approximate list of questions to your employee so that he can think and prepare in advance.

If you can’t immediately get answers to all your questions, do not worry, not everyone can immediately open to their leader. You can give the employee time to think over some questions and answer later in a personal conversation or letter. In addition, there may indeed be no answers, in which case, you can reason and find them together.

Keep your information private if an employee asks you to. If you need to attract someone to solve a colleague’s problem, explain it, get confirmation on the performance of certain actions that relate to personal and non-public information. Keep secrets to yourself if an employee asks you to. Your silence will be much appreciated. Trust must be earned!

Record all major agreements and promises in a letter , or ask an employee to do this. If employees see that after each meeting, your arrangements for resolving problems are being fulfilled, they will be grateful to you and will raise questions that concern them.

If you know useful topics that are worth discussing with employees, I will be glad to hear them in the comments!

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Tête-à-tête: asking the right questions