Better questions for meetings

Most meetings don't fail because people talk too little. They fail because nobody asked the question that would have made the talking useful. A status meeting runs long because no one asks what actually needs a decision. A project goes sideways because the person who saw the problem waited to be asked, and nobody asked.

Good meeting questions are mostly about three things: what this meeting is for, what people really think, and what happens next.

Open with the purpose

The most useful first question is one the organizer should answer before anyone else speaks: "What do we need to decide or learn by the end of this meeting?" If the answer is "nothing, it's an update," consider sending the update in writing instead.

When you're not the organizer, you can still ask it politely: "Before we start, what's the main thing we need to leave with today?" It helps everyone, including the person who called the meeting.

Ask people, not the room

"Does anyone have any questions?" is one of the least productive sentences in office life. It's a yes/no question addressed to no one, so the easiest answer is silence.

Ask a named person a specific question instead:

• "Sam, you talked to the customer last week. What did they care about most?"
• "What would make this hard to support once it ships, Lena?"
• "Which part of this plan worries you most?" (asked of each person in turn)

If you want everyone's view before the loudest person sets the direction, ask people to write down their answer first and then share. It takes a minute and usually surfaces disagreement that would otherwise come out in a hallway afterward.

Questions that surface quiet disagreement

People often nod along in meetings and object later. Some questions make it safer to object now:

• "What would have to be true for this to fail?"
• "If we look back in six months and this didn't work, what's the most likely reason?"
• "What's the strongest argument against the option we're leaning toward?"
• "Who is affected by this who isn't here?"

The second one is a version of the "premortem," an exercise popularized by the psychologist Gary Klein. Imagining that a plan has already failed and explaining why tends to bring up risks people hesitate to raise when the plan is still everyone's hope.

Questions for deciding

When a discussion circles, it's usually because the group hasn't agreed on what it's choosing between or how. Questions that break the loop:

• "What are the actual options on the table?"
• "What would we need to know to choose, and can we find out today?"
• "Who makes the final call on this?"
• "Is this decision easy to reverse? If so, can we try one option and check in two weeks?"

That last question matters more than it sounds. Plenty of decisions get debated as if they were permanent when they could be tested cheaply.

Close with owners and dates

End every meeting with "Who is doing what, by when?" Then read the answers back out loud. It takes two minutes, and it settles the most common post-meeting argument, which is about what was agreed.

At the start of the next meeting, ask: "What did we agree to last time, and where does each item stand?" That one habit makes the first question in every future meeting more honest.

A note on tone

Questions can be used as weapons in a meeting just as easily as statements can. "Why didn't anyone think of this before?" is a complaint dressed as a question, and people hear it that way. "What would have helped us catch this earlier?" asks about the same thing and invites an answer. If you're not sure how a question will land, try it in the question checker.