12 Neglected Questions Successful Leaders Keep Asking
Wrong questions turn people’s attention to distracting issues. You hinder progress when you distract your team.
Distractions cause damage.
Questions establish focus.
Wrong questions:
- Don’t ask about details when dreams are forming. Details kill dreams.
- Don’t ask about dreams when it’s time to execute.
- Don’t ask “why” when reasons for failure aren’t acceptable.
Questions are statements.
Right people:
Right answers require the right people.
- Ask critics about their values and assumptions.
- Ask front line people to explain what it takes to get things done, not upper management.
- Ask committed teammates how you might move forward.
12 neglected questions successful leaders keep asking:
- Who are you/we becoming? “Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.” Frances Hesselbein
- If things continue as they are, will you be happy with where you end up?
- What’s best for my team? (Try inserting customers, employees, leaders into the question.) Rise above “what’s best for me” thinking.
- What tough decisions would a new leader make? Defending past decisions keeps you doing wrong things.
- What are you trying to accomplish? The capacity to keep struggling, after losing sight of what you’re trying to accomplish, is astonishing and tragic.
- What’s working?
- Where are we winning? (Try inserting “how” in place of “where”.)
- What do you need to stop? It takes more courage to stop something old than to start something new. Over-commitment and distraction are the result of starting new things without stopping old.
- What’s giving you energy? (Alternative: Where is the energy in our organization?)
- How are you getting where you want to go?
- Who are you serving?
- What do the people you serve value?
Questions explain what matters. Wrong questions are distractions.
Project: Set aside a morning to only ask questions.
How might leaders distract teams?
What questions help organizations/individuals focus on what matters?
Great questions.. we (I) can become so overcome in the momentum of “doing” that I neglect these questions… like the NFL’s Halftime, it’s important we take a break and look from a different – questioning – perspective. Thanks Dan.
Thanks Ken. The language “questioning perspective” is so helpful. I see tensions between our need for certainty and the courage to question.
Great list of questions!!! Hard to order noting importance. But I think I’d put the last two (Who are you serving? What do the people you serve value?) at the top of the list.
Thanks John. You’d be in good company if you put the last two questions first. Drucker said it this way. Who is our customer and What do our customers value?
Don’t ever want students to think we educators see them as customers of course. I try to use learners rather than students – just to remind me what my responsibilities are (educator rather than teacher or even faculty / professor for the same reason). But, in honesty, we all seek to satisfy needs in a caring and trustworthy manner…
Dan, Questions that focus on the group’s mission statement seem to come to mind! Stray off course and the distractions begin to form. Stay true to the groups core functions and concentrate on the mission with the ” all in” approach. As we ponder on the focus points be flexible yet fulfill the mission.
Thanks Tim. What questions help us focus on mission and vision? That would make a useful list of questions.
Dan, What are we trying to accomplish? Who is our target audience? Where do we want to take the group in regards to Leadership? What is our impact statement ” the wow factor”? Just a few thoughts.
Good piece Dan — 8, 9 & 10 get right at it for me. Thanks!
Thanks Mark. The stopping question may be the most impactful.
Great questions. Generating the power of asking.
The last two questions are part of Peter Drucker’s 5 Questions when broken further down. They are definitely often neglected, but can lead to powerfully transformative conversations when asked.
Many of these strike me as good life questions, too.
The best question (in my opinion, of course) is definitely “How are we winning?” Sometimes we just get so focused in the details of what we do that we forget to look up at the bigger picture and see how what we’re doing makes a difference in accordance to the vision and our goals. And, of course, this is the responsibility of the leader to share when people seemed disheartened. No news consistently often just feels like a bunch of losses.
Great questions