Questions open doors and open minds. Answers, for the most part, don’t. Powerfully phrased questions open worlds of possibilities for people to dream new dreams, to generate new solutions and to strengthen each person’s recognition of his/her latent potential for personal growth and for contributions of leadership.
Great questions:
- Are open ended; never “yes” or “no”
- Empower the other— finding blame doesn’t usually advance the project
- You are not a mind reader —- don’t assume
- “Why” questions generally won’t get you far
- Ask at least 4 questions deep— the answer is often deeper than anyone
knows - Get your Q:S ratio as high as you can
Use questions to start group meetings, in conversation with team members, customers, vendors, and for developing tactics for maximizing opportunities.
- What’s the most important thing we should be talking about today?
- What are you hoping I won’t bring up?
- What do we think is impossible to do?
- How can we make it happen?
- What are the gaps between what we say and what we do?
- What are we pretending not to know?
- What do we do which guarantees the results that we don’t like?
- What’s the most important act we need to take?
- What’s stopping us?
- What are we afraid of?
- When will we do it?
- If we were hired to consult with our company, what advice would we give?
- If we were our competitor, what would we be doing?
- If nothing changes, what will happen?
- If you knew you could not fail, what would you do?
- What conversations are we/you/I avoiding?
- What do you think I don’t want to hear?
- What does success look like?
- What is the best contribution you/I/we can make?
- What do you need to change about yourself to make that contribution even
- more meaningful?
- What personal background and emotions affect your work?
- How do you feel about that?
- What attitude do you bring to your life every day?
- What do your colleagues and direct reports see?
- What are your special strengths do you have?
- Are we using your best strengths?
- What can you do to make the job of your supervisor, your colleagues and
- your direct reports look like stars?
- What is stopping you from that?
- What improvements in the operations would you like to see?
- How would that work?
- What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
- What good things would come from that?
- What is stopping you?
- What does your perfect day look like?
- What else should we be talking about?
- When will we do that?
- What has happened since our last meeting?
- Tell me a little of what’s going on now.
- What’s most important for you to focus on today?
- What is your gut feeling about that?
- What is most significant for you in all of this?
- Exactly why is this a problem?
- Could that really be a symptom?
- Where do you want to put your energy?
- What do we want to be known for?
When you ask questions you learn more, the other person is empowered, and new ideas are explored. When new ideas are explored, progress happens.
Ask more questions.