Tete-a-tete: ask the right questions

To successfully build teamwork (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 time to talk with an employee, but also in receiving and communicating the necessary information.

If you are on the way to holding regular individual meetings with an employee or are already practicing them, but do not know what else to ask, our article will be useful! Below you will find a list of questions, the answers to which will help to improve teamwork in teams, increase loyalty to the company, find out the problems of your colleagues . This compilation should be for you not so much ready formulations as a designation of the direction, based on which you can formulate more precise and relevant questions, taking into account the personal characteristics of the interlocutor, the features of work in your company.

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I divided the questions for individual meetings into 5 groups :

Small talk;
Personal issues;
Project issues;
Retrospective questions;
Questions about working 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 receive a lot of non-verbal information: subconsciously analyze a person’s posture in space, timbre and tempo of speech, posture, mood, general mood. For this, we need an easy, seemingly meaningless conversation. Start a conversation with conversations about the weather, transport, give a compliment to a colleague, briefly discuss recent events.

Personal questions

These are questions that allow the employee to know better, understand what motivates him and what does not, help solve his problems, get operational information on current interaction. I advise you to start with the question "What would you like to discuss at the 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, project technical director, direction supervisor, 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 responses received)
When did you like to work on the task / project, and what exactly did you like?
What demotivates you at work?
What are your most productive hours at work?
Is there something, someone that distracts you (neighbor's music, drafts ...)?
When and in what form is it more convenient to ask you? (at any time / to notify in advance that I will come up / agree in advance on the meeting time 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 advise this or that useful book?
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 its own direction?
How can I help you to work better (describe tasks better, come and communicate more often live, involve your leader / technical leader / etc.)?
Do you have problems with the equipment and equipment of the workplace?
Do you have the opportunity to work from home at the request of the manager, is the equipment set up?
What is the best way to convey positive and negative feedback to you, so that we can better build interaction?
Can you list the moments when your work was underestimated?
Can you list the moments when your work was overestimated?
Do you have any acquaintances / friends who would like to work with us or whom you can advise?

It is important to feel the difference between personal space and professional interest, to understand how much you “got credibility from a person”, and what questions he can perceive as an invasion of personal life and personal space.

Questions on project work

These are questions relating to the immediate activities of the employee at the moment. In our case - design issues. Having received answers to these questions and retrospective questions about the project, you can improve the performance indicators.

What do you think about the project XXX?
What are the goals of our project?
Are there alternatives to this project that are easy to implement? (Sometimes other solutions are possible that will require less cost than our project)
Do you like working with Trello / Jira / Youtrack / with any other task tracker?
How well I understand the tasks in XXX, and testers - describe the bugs? Are personal explanations often required?
Do our daily / weekly / monthly reports suit you? See, do you make sense of them?
In what form would you like to receive Technical Assignments or other project documentation?
Do you use developments in past projects in the current? Why?
Do you ask your colleagues, was the decision right, did you consult them? If so, who?
Who in your opinion writes the code / solves the tasks better than you? Why?
Who in your opinion writes 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 Questions

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

For project activities:

What was done well in the XXX project, and what would be better to improve? What needs to be done to improve it?
What difficulties were in project XXX, and what was easier than in previous projects?
Do you think we have successfully chosen Jenkins / Fabric / other services?
Why do you think we left / did we manage not to leave the planned labor costs?
Do you think that rewriting is easier than sorting out someone else's code?
Do you like working in a team or yourself on a project?
Do you think the team should be involved in demonstrating the results to the client and answering the clients' questions with the manager?
Do you think the retrospective process is useful? how often should it be done?
Did you reread retrospectives on past projects? Used some of them?

For processes in the company:

Have you ever written a proposal to improve the processes in the company, as it is evaluated?
What processes, in your opinion, require improvement?
Do you have any suggestions how to improve the interaction between the development, testing, design, administration, and other departments?
How to improve the interaction between senior and junior programmers / testers / designers?
How to improve the evaluation of projects? How to get into the assessment?
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?

Questions of work in the company

This is a set of questions that directly relates to the interaction between an employee and a company. Hearing and solving the problems of employees can significantly increase their loyalty.

Do you understand the company's course?
What are the positive aspects of the company?
Are you satisfied with your growth in the company?
You see, you have growth prospects in our company?
Do you think we have a well-established interaction between people?
What do you think account managers do / Sales / et al?
Do you think a manager helps 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 honor roll, issuing awards, etc.), do you understand them?
Do you know what advice / department / etc. can help in your work?
How do you think, in what can the staff service help you?
Would you personally address the problem to the CEO, if not, why not?
Do you think the company manages to create a cozy and soulful atmosphere in the office?
Are you able to relax in the rest room?
Do you congratulate colleagues on your birthday?
Do you know about the company library?
Do you know that sports in our company are partially paid / fully paid / is there a gym?
What ways of motivation do you see in the company, which could be added?
How best to explain to the employee that he is mistaken?
Do you know about regulations / coding / job descriptions and where can I get them?
Do you think the fair way to account for working hours in the company?
Do you plan to increase the number of working hours? (for part time)
Who is your understanding of 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)? What do you think they are held for?
Do you read weekly reports / newsletters / magazines from divisions / the entire company? What is most interesting? Why?
Are you interested in participating in employee training, conducting courses / lectures?

Total

It is important that the communication was conducted in a friendly atmosphere with a minimal amount of distraction: from conversations of colleagues behind your back to a cell phone that suddenly started ringing. Ideal to use specialized meeting rooms , of course, if any. Send an approximate list of questions to your employee so that he can think ahead and prepare.

If you do not immediately get answers to all your questions, do not worry, not everyone can immediately open up to their leader. You can give the employee time to think about some questions and answer later in a personal conversation or letter. In addition, the answers may not really be, in this case, you can speculate and find them together.

Ensure confidentiality of information , if the employee asks you about it. If you need to involve someone to solve the problem of a colleague, explain this, you will receive confirmation of the execution of certain actions that relate to personal and non-public information. Leave secrets to yourself if the employee asked you to. Your silence will be much appreciated. Trust must be earned!

Record all major agreements and promises in a letter , or ask the employee to do so. If the employees see that after each meeting, your agreements on solving problems are carried out, they will be grateful to you and will raise their concerns themselves.

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

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/322444/

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