How to ask smart and meaningful questions!!!
“Hey, you know this guy?”,
“Yes. He has been coming for all our Speaker events. He ask really good questions.”
It was after hours past the Industry Speaker Series event and I was hanging out with event organizer team and faculties.
This small conversation happened between my coop advisor faculty and organizer from Northeastern Career Service department. We talked about many things but this conversation starter got me into thinking. That person remember me as the fellow who ask smart questions in those events.
Now this is not much surprise to me because I always felt that other students were asking really stupid questions. And not in a sense that questions were not appropriate. Most of them were just too generic and felt like they are just asking because they have to ask something for the sake of it.
For example, one of the speaker presented the novel approach to deploy AI on small devices. The presentation was done by technical co-founder and he really went into details of his research. I was the first to ask the question immediately after his presentation. Faculties called for anyone else to ask questions. After 60 second of awkward silence, one guys asked, “How a software engineers' day looks like in your company?”. You may think that it is not bad question but it is absolutely absurd question in my opinion. You have an opportunity to ask something to one of the smartest engineer in Boston and you ask him this generic question. That is also after long pause. This almost imply that the guy did not pay attention during presentation and he is asking question just to get some eyes on him. And don’t take my word for it. You can immediately observe the disinterest of speaker in answering this generic question.
After multiple observations, I started to introspect on what I was doing right to earn the recognization as guys who ask good questions. This is what I found. It is mix of empathy and expectations. It start with listening first. When you listen to them, you understand who they are and why they are standing in-front of you. If it is one to one conversation, ask few questions to understand what their expectations are. Once you know of who they are and why they are here, you need to find out the story they are desperate to tell. When you know this much, asking questions becomes so much easy.
On our example above, the speaker came to tell the story about how they build this great AI technology and leading the industry. So I opened up my lines with summarizing on problem they are solving and ask “why their product is unique in market and none of their competitor were able to built it? Is it because they were the first to implement this novel approach or they are sitting on some patent on this technology?” The guy was more than excited to answer my question. The first lines in my questions were to established that I was listening them carefully and I understood their presentation. That built the excitement for him because he knows that I was listening. And my actual question was extremely specific about the unique thing they built. There are hardly few people who can answer that question. Answering that question also made him feel special in this regards. It was a new knowledge, outside his presentation that he shared. So the question added value in the whole event. At the end, this is the story he wanted to tell to the world.
The above example was in the setup of Conference and asking question to the speaker. But this very well apply to small group or one x one conversations. Every participating person in the group has his story and his expectations from participating group. Just asking few questions will reveal a lot about them. Next step is easy, ask the questions around their story and interest.