Doctors can’t make diagnoses without asking the right questions of patients. Police can’t solve crimes without asking the right questions of witnesses and victims. Journalists can’t write stories without asking the right questions of their sources.
And leaders can’t effectively lead without asking the right questions of those on their teams.
Great leaders don’t have all the answers. But great leaders find the answers in others and themselves.
When a manager asks thoughtful, open-ended questions of their teams, it lets them know their input is valued and the leader doesn’t think he or she has all the answers.
Ed Schein in Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling defines humble inquiry as “creating a climate in which you display, through your asking genuine questions, an interest in the other person such that they will want to tell you the truth about what really is going on.”
Good questions means knowledge and information is shared, which motivates and inspires people to act. Good questions bring out the best in individuals and create the best outcomes for teams.
As John. C. Maxwell says in Good Leaders Ask Great Questions: Your Foundation for Successful Leadership: “When team members no longer believe that their leader listens to them, they start looking around for someone who will.”
Yet the art of asking questions is not taught in business schools. It’s not a core competency listed on executive job descriptions.
It is said that the average four-year-old asks 437 questions a day. As we get older and gain knowledge, we ask fewer questions. Our education system tests our ability to answer questions, not pose them. As we move through our careers, we are awarded for having the answers. We are the experts in our field – sales, operations, finance, IT – and our managers turn to us for the solutions.
But eventually, if we become that manager, that leader, we have moved past our area of expertise, past the place where we had all the answers and to a place where we must ask the right questions.
So what are the right questions? Sometimes the right question is one that elicits simple information about a project deadline, a product rollout or sales targets.
But powerful questions go much further and do much more. They provoke thought, stimulate conversation, uncover assumptions, invite creativity, explore possibilities, generate momentum, evoke more questions, and create hope, optimism and engagement.
Great leaders I have been fortunate enough to work with ask all kinds of questions: Why do we do what we do? Is there a better way? How do we know what we think we know? What possibilities exist that we haven’t thought of yet? What can we do to help shift this situation? What do you think? Is there something we should know, that we haven’t asked about? That question often opens a wide door – enabling people with different expertise or perspectives to raise ideas or opinions that might be slightly off-topic but productive for the dialogue.
Paraphrasing Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz: You can tell whether a person is clever by his or her answers. You can tell whether a person is wise by his or her questions.
Ask questions.