Chris A. Petersen

Strategic Thinker, Professional Speaker, and Workshop Facilitator

Tips for Asking Good Questions

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question,” right? It may be true, and of course it’s important to be curious and seek clarification, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put any thought into the questions you ask—especially at work, where time is valuable and everyone is focused on their own tasks. If you want to be as effective and efficient as possible in your question-asking, here are a few strategies sure it impress your boss and grow you as an employee.

Do Your Research
Before running to your supervisor every time you encounter a question about an assignment or project, try doing a bit of research first to see if you can’t find the answer on your own. Explore online—there’s a good chance Google will know. If it’s a question someone else has already asked, the answer you’re looking for might be in an email chain or your notes. Take the couple of extra minutes to search your inbox—you don’t want to waste your supervisor’s time having to repeat information when the answer was already available you.

Make a Plan
Determine exactly the information you need before you ask your question. Have a purpose for what you are going to ask, and then do so efficiently. Is your question clear and concise? How much background information is actually necessary? Don’t beat around the bush, either, and don’t ask too many questions at once. Also find out what time of day is most convenient for your coworker or boss. Be respectful of their schedule so you’re not interrupting phone calls, meetings, or crucial work time. Make a plan, practice in your head, and then ask away.

Keep it Professional
Only ask questions you really need the answers to. Nosy, personal questions are distracting, unnecessary, and unprofessional. Ask questions relevant to the projects you are involved in and need to know about.

Be Authentic
Only ask questions you don’t know the answer to, and don’t use questions as an opportunity to push your opinion. If you have an opinion to share, state it openly. Don’t try to obscure it behind a question mark. Save asking questions for things you don’t know.

Be Thoughtful
Your supervisor will notice if you have taken the time to craft a quality question. Such thoughtfulness will demonstrate you are not only a capable employee, but are also respectful of their time. These well thought-out questions will also show your ability to iterate and improve your thoughts, as well as your ability to tackle challenges from every angle. So take the time to think about the topic at hand, figure out what you need to know more about, and then ask the appropriate question.

By following these principles, you may ask fewer questions, but you’ll find the more careful and intentional you are with your questions, the more you will ultimately learn. Such intentionality will help you to think critically and deeply, as well as impress your employers. Curiosity leads to improvement and growth, but only if you ask the right questions at the right time. So keep asking… after you think.

How Much Should I Drink at a Work Event?

Drinking at a Work Event

As professionals, there are a variety of work events and functions we often attend throughout our careers. These events are great opportunities to network and build relationships both with clients and senior level managers and executives–but only if you make a good impression.

Because alcohol is often served at such work events, I’m often asked by people starting their careers how much is appropriate to drink. Knowing how much to drink, when you are trying to both fit in with the company culture, and enjoy yourself, can be a tricky tightrope to walk.

Know Your Limits

My advice is always, first and foremost, know your limits. The work event might be during happy hour, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to let loose with friends and get drunk. Remember, clients, bosses, and coworkers will be there, and they will be watching your behavior.

Think about the effect alcohol has on you. What types of behaviors have you had in the past after consuming it? I have seen people get so drunk at work events they lost their jobs. How you behave in any type of work setting, whether it is during business hours or not, will affect your career. I have watched coworkers stumble during ceremonies, incapable of making it to their hotel rooms at conferences, and coworkers hook up even though they were married to other people.

Behavior like this will only put you and other coworkers in awkward and damaging situations. After I witnessed the two married coworkers hook up, they both approached me the next morning and asked me to keep quiet. Not only had they behaved inappropriately and put themselves in a bad situation, they had dragged me, a coworker, into their very uncomfortable personal matter. Talk about unprofessional!

Set Boundaries

Again, be aware of your own limits, and determine before the event how much you can and will drink. Know what you are like after one drink, two, three, and so on, and decide a safe number to draw the line for a professional event. Remember the purpose of the event: to network and build relationships. Your goal should be to remain in control of your behavior so you can effectively communicate and interact with clients and coworkers, and ultimately leave a good impression and perhaps make connections that will advance your career.

Think about it: do you often see CEOs and other supervisors drinking at work events? Probably not, or at least not much. They recognize any work event is an opportunity to network and get ahead in their career, neither of which can be done if you can’t even stand up straight.

If you are unsure of how alcohol may affect you, you have any other health or religious concerns, or you are not yet sure what is acceptable at your particular company, it is ok for you to forgo drinking altogether. Don’t ever feel you have to drink at a work event, and don’t push alcohol on others either. Ask before ordering another round, and if someone declines an offer for a drink, respect their answer.

Follow Company Policy

That being said, don’t feel like you can’t drink at all. If your company allows it, a drink or two is acceptable. Once you know your own limitations, keep an eye on your supervisors and coworkers and follow their lead for how much to drink. Do they have a drink or two and then stop completely? Do they nurse one drink all night? Pay attention; this will tell you how much is permissible for your company.

If you do decide to have a few drinks,  keep these tips in mind:

  • Set a limit and stick to it
  • Follow the lead of your supervisors and coworkers
  • Eat before and while you drink
  • Alternate between your drink and water
  • Do not use alcohol as a way to decrease your anxiety

Whether you decide to drink one glass, two, or none at all, the focus of the event should be your clients, career, and building relationships–not alcohol. If you know you can stay in control after one or two drinks, go for it. If you know your boss is ok with you having a drink, go for it. Enter the event with the intention of growing your network, yourself, and your career. Keep it in moderation, keep it professional, and leave the event knowing you gave everyone in attendance the very best impression of yourself possible.

How to Develop Good Relationships with Coworkers

Oftentimes people in the workplace hear opposing opinions on the role of friendship and its place in the work environment. One side says, “We’re not at work to make friends.” These companies look at the potential downfalls of incorporating friendship into the business plan–such as excessive chatter, romantic entanglements, problems for people who struggle with separating work from play, creating conflict-of-interest scenarios, and challenging independent judgment.

While these are valid risks of encouraging positive relationships in the workplace, this mindset is is focused on making work the transactional center of efficient people tackling a list of tasks. However, research proves allowing and promoting team-building is more beneficial in the long run for employees.

In the past, companies who sat on the “no friends” side of the fence restricted opportunities for their employees to build relationships. Oftentimes this took the form of discouraging employees from participating on the same sports team, romantic relationships, and in extreme cases even discouraging eating together on lunch breaks.   

Companies that sit on the other side of the fence (and in this day and age, most companies are pro-friendship) stress the need for healthy work relationships, placing value in team-building exercises in order to foster friendship in the workplace. People can make or break the work environment, and how they relate to one another is critical. Friendships at work can produce extremely desirable things:

  1. Increased and steady productivity
  2. Steady levels of happiness and enjoyment
  3. And finally, providing stable mental environments

It’s important to have healthy relationships with your coworkers in the office. It provides avenues for workers to problem solve and tackle projects together; instead of feeling like an obligation, camaraderie and relationship building creates a situation of a friend needing assistance to finish a big project.

On average, the full-time employee spends eight hours a day at work. The critical variable: is the work environment draining and detrimental to productivity, or are there people to offer jokes, light-hearted stories, and a shoulder to lean on during times of large workloads, resulting in a welcoming space to work? Introducing opportunities for employees to forge work friendships not only allows a time to de-stress, but also a time to laugh.

Which ties into the final point – staying sane. When the deluge of hectic craziness hits, sometimes only a shared groan can remind you that you’re human. Making friends in the workplace creates a support network and does wonders for morale, mental health, and productivity.

Regardless of where you work, more often than not you will have to interact with people; you will have a boss, you will have people you’re serving, and you will have people you’re working with. Developing and maintaining good relationships with coworkers is important.

Let’s look at ways to cultivate and develop good relationships with coworkers:

Know how to present yourself

Putting your best foot forward is always intimidating when beginning a new job or beginning a new friendship. Being personable and confident in the skills you have, as well as who you are, allows you to interact with coworkers about tasks and assignments, providing avenues to break the ice. While it may take time to learn how to perform the responsibilities of the position you’ve been hired for, it’s also important to learn how to integrate yourself into the company.

Use good communication skills

Communication takes work – and is learned through a trial-and-error process. Listening, asking questions, being honest, being open, and being prepared and confident in what you’re trying to say are all important pieces of being a good communicator. Getting personal allows you to build a connection by focusing on how a message is being understood by the listener. Ensuring that the information you’re passing on in a conversation is correct is critical. If you lack confidence in whether or not your information is valid, admit uncertainty. When speaking with another person, avoid superfluous and vague words and phrases that would detract from what you’re saying. Most importantly, effective communication is knowing what, when, and how to communicate with those around you. By being a good communicator, people can get to know you on a deeper and more personal level, resulting in friendship.

Establish appropriate boundaries

Remember, building relationships with coworkers is so that the workload goes faster and getting through it becomes more efficient. If, instead, you use the workplace to pick up a romantic relationship, it will complicate not only how you relate to the individual you’re now seeing, but the dynamic between you and the other workers. Keeping in mind that the workplace is the environment to develop strategies to work better, instead of a place to find new drinking buddies is helpful for drawing those lines.

Learning how to separate professional and personal relationships

In some cases, you may be privy to more knowledge about a situation than your coworker friend, and you’ll be faced with the choice of either sharing what you know even though it’s detrimental for the information to be shared, or keeping the information from your friend but dealing with feelings of betrayal. Or you may be in a scenario where you and your friend are competing and being ranked against each other. A necessary skill is learning how to celebrate your friend’s success when they do better than you, and how to maintain friendship through jealousy which may result from doing better than your friends.

 

Being a Good Listener

Each one of us has a powerful desire to be heard. We all love to talk and are propelled to everyday conversations out of necessity or to exchange pleasantries.

At times, we have real dialogues with a cherished friend or colleague. When people speak to us, we try to exhibit behaviors which make them feel they have our full, undivided attention and that we are in fact, listening to them: we nod, offer encouragement, give advices, present suggestions and voice our opinions.

But, it takes more to be a good listener. Let not the art of listening be lost on us. Do not drown others’ voices with noise and superficial responses. Practice to become a good listener, as conversations with a good listener are both pleasant and therapeutic; people will feel cared for, understood and connected when you actually listen to them.

The good listener takes in both verbal and nonverbal cues from interpersonal communication ― this is called active listening. The good listener makes eye contact by facing the person and leaning towards them. The good listener notes the conflicting messages through nonverbal cues. When asking someone how they are doing, the good listener would know the real answer by observing the cheery response versus the teary eyes.

By responding rather than reacting, a good listener assures the person they are interacting with, that their thoughts and feelings matter. Rather than offering unsolicited advice or giving personal opinions which may cause resentment, the good listener, knowing that a person is entitled to their own feelings, however negative, will encourage others to express themselves freely without judgment.

They encourage the speaker to keep talking by using the words: “go on.” The good listener acknowledges emotions and does not give false reassurances.

If someone tells you how devastated they feel on the recent death of a family pet, the response shouldn’t be advising them to buy a new pet to replace the departed or that they will get over it soon, instead acknowledge their grief by saying: “You are devastated that you lost such a cherished friend. He wasn’t just a pet.”

In this way, the good listener is able to convey their concern for the person. An appropriate, gentle, and comforting touch will also help: a hand on the shoulder, a light hug or a gentle squeeze of the hand.

The good listener asks open-ended, relevant questions. Questions that may be answered by a YES/NO won’t suffice. In this way, feelings are explored and there is an allowance for self-evaluation, wherein perceptions and views are discussed.

The good listener also maintains silence as needed and is congruent with their words and actions. Assuring a person you are listening while periodically tinkering with your phone sends an ambivalent message.

The good listener avoids changing the subject. If a friend wants to talk about her officemate woes for the umpteenth time, the good listener doesn’t cut her off to talk about something else or make sarcastic remarks.

The good listener will be remembered by people with fondness, they are able to foster more meaningful relationships with others. Good listeners are valued in society because after all, we all desire to heard and not just listened to.

 

How to Prepare for an Interview

Prepare for an Interview

Interviews can be an intimidating, seemingly terrifying, experience, but they don’t have to be!

We’ve all dreaded an interview before, but why? Why do so many people look at interviews as if they are the worst thing ever? The answer is probably because a lot of people don’t know how to properly prepare for an interview.

Ask yourself these questions when preparing for an interview:

Have you researched the position and company you’re applying for?

Are you dressed appropriately?

Do you believe you have what it takes to do this job?

If the answer is yes to all those questions, then you shouldn’t be afraid at all!

Interviewers are not scary sharks wanting to bite you, they are regular people just like you and me, and it is their job to make sure you’re the right fit for their company.

Some questions might be tough, but as long as you are confident, the interview should go smoothly.

Always make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into – that means researching ahead of time. Some people walk into interviews without knowing a thing about the job they’re applying for. Don’t do that! The more you know about the job and company, the more impressed your interviewer will be.

Dress nicely – dress shirt and slacks for men, skirt, dress, or slacks for women. Don’t show too much skin, and don’t dress too casually. Your appearance has an impact on the way people will perceive you; for good or for bad, that is just the way our minds work. Shower, shave, make sure your hair is neat and styled, and that your clothing is appropriate. If you make an effort to look nice, you’ll give off a great first impression toward your potential employer.

Now, lastly, if you have the right skill set for the job you’re interviewing for, then you should already know you’re going to do fine. Someone walking into an interview with zero relevant experience is going to have a tougher time than you are. You’ve already got a leg up on the competition if your resume tells your employer you’ll be a great fit for the job. Just relax, show off your positive attributes and greatest strengths, and your interview will lead to a job!