Leading With Questions
How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
BBB Library: Leadership, Communication
ISBN: 9781118658130
Editorial Review
Questions can elicit information, of course, but they can do much more. Astute leaders use questions to encourage full participation and teamwork, to spur innovation and outside-the-box thinking, to empower others, to solve problems, to build relationships with others. Recent research—and the experience of a growing number of organizations—now points to the conclusion that the most successful leaders lead with questions. They create the conditions and environment to ask and be asked questions. Too often, we ask questions that disempower rather than empower our subordinates. These questions cast blame, for example, “Whose idea was that?” Then, the point isn’t that leaders just don’t ask enough questions. Often, we don’t ask the right questions or we don’t ask questions in a way that will lead to honest and informative answers. Many of us don’t know how to listen effectively to the answers to the questions and haven’t established a climate in which asking questions is encouraged. So, it’s time for us to become stronger leaders by learning how to ask the right questions effectively, how to listen effectively, and how to create a climate in which asking questions becomes as natural as breathing.
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Wisdom to Share
Leaders who ask questions will create a more humane workplace as well as a more successful business.
Leaders who can ask and process information will build organizations that have a tremendous competitive advantage over their slower and less proactive competition.
The primary difference between leaders and managers is that leaders are those who ask the right questions whereas managers are those tasked to answer those questions.
As leaders, we need to be able to question assumptions about structures, strategies, values, and business processes that shape the organizational culture.
Questions spark and direct attention, perception, energy, and effort, and that’s the heart of innovation.
Leaders who build questioning cultures recognize the best in people and seek to affirm past and present strengths, successes, assets, and potentials.
Effective leaders know that the question of who must be left off the table to get accurate answers to the questions of what and why.
Leaders with the judgmental mindset tend to focus on the past, not as a means of learning but to apportion praise or blame.
The Attitude, mindset, pace, timing, environment, and context all can affect the impact of our questions.
Open-ended questions encourage people to do the work of self-reflection and problem solving rather than justifying or defending a position.
Effective questions are those that accomplish their purpose as well as build a positive relationship between the questioner and questionee.
Once in this defensive mode, people are more likely to see themselves as part of the problem rather than as a source of possible solutions.
Disempowering questions result in a defensive or reactive mode, immediately casting the blame on the other person.
Leaders can best access this wealth of experience and empower their people by encouraging questions as a natural part of the team discussions.
Organizations that encourage leaders at all levels to take the time to ask thoughtful questions improve the odds of making good decisions.
It’s time for us to become stronger leaders by learning how to ask the right questions effectively, how to listen effectively.
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