Leading with Questions

As a manager, we probably all recognise that it's often much quicker and easier in the short term to offer advice or suggestions when a team member or colleague is struggling or comes to you with a problem. After all, we have the experience and understanding of the situation, and we want the situation to be dealt with 'in the right way' so that things are kept on track and problems minimised.

However, in suggesting the solution for a quick win, there are other longer term costs: adding to your own workload and responsibility, limiting the other person's opportunity for development and achievement and losing the potential for creativity and ownership on which effective organisations thrive.

Benefits of asking the right questions

In this book, subtitled 'how leaders find the right solutions by knowing what questions to ask', Professor Marquard offers a useful framework for asking the right questions at the right time. The benefits of doing this go beyond finding appropriate solutions - for the employee they also include:

• increased confidence and respect
• new ways of thinking
• taking ownership and responsibility
• greater achievement and competence
• developing resources to become more independent going forward

Disempowering questions

Marquard challenges the often quoted truism that 'there are no bad questions'. Being asked the wrong sort of questions, he argues, can indeed be more disempowering than just being offered a suggestion. Questions that imply an agenda or presuppose failure or blame can cause defensiveness and damage confidence. A string of closed questions is also unhelpful as it can feel like an interrogation.

What would it feel like to be on the receiving end of these questions:

• Everybody else thinks the problem is X. What do you think?
• Why has this report not been finished yet?
• When is the meeting? Who's coming? Why is Y on the agenda? What's the output?

Creating a culture that fosters effective questioning

Unsurprisingly, Marquard says that leaders play an essential role in demonstrating that they value the power of effective questioning. As well as role modelling this approach, he suggests introducing into the performance appraisal process an invitation to bring 'best questions'. These might be examples of questions that created a particularly successful outcome, or may be questions the appraisee wishes to bring to the appraisal process to support their own development.

Empowering and effective questions

In her Harvard Business blog on Marquard's book, Judith Ross identifies various effective and empowering questions and the value that they bring:

1. They create clarity: "Can you explain more about this situation?"
2. They construct better working relations: Instead of "Did you make your sales goal?" ask, "How have sales been going?"
3. They help people think analytically and critically: "What are the consequences of going this route?"
4. They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: "Why did this work?"
5. They encourage breakthrough thinking: "Can that be done in any other way?"
6. They challenge assumptions: "What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?"
7. They create ownership of solutions: "Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?"

"If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the
solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper
question to ask, for once I know the proper question,
I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes."