The Three Questions Every Leader Should Master

Questions.

Unavoidable in the workplace.

Employees ask questions.

Managers ask questions.

Leaders ask questions.

Asking questions is a skill that serves you well as a leader. Questions help us – according to Steve Quatrano, a member of the Right Question Institute – “to organize our thinking around what we don’t know”.

{Note: A few weeks the feature article in the LeadershipBeyond E-zine was about the untapped power of asking questions. If you’ve missed it, you can find it here.}

Good leaders only ask certain questions. They don’t ask questions that come from a desire to micro-manage like, “How are you going to approach…” or “What are you going to do today?”

I know that a lot of managers and leaders don’t approve of micro-management but do it, nevertheless.

Also avoid questions that show distrust like “How will I know that you’ve done exactly that?” Oops. Just typing the question makes me shiver. For heaven’s sake address the issues around the distrust. Don’t disguise your distrust in questions like that.

So, now we’ve identified a couple of examples of questions not to ask, what kind of questions do you want to master as a leader?

Here are my favorite three questions:

Question 1. “What one thing do I don’t want to hear?”

Woh! Wouldn’t we like to avoid a question like that.

Beth Comstock, Vice Chairwoman of General Electric, recommends asking this question. Through this question she invites employees to give her some bad news.

Her reasoning is that as you climb the ladder employees shy away from giving you bad news. The employees don’t like to bring problems to your attention. It might be that they just prefer to please you with good news. Or they might be trained never to discuss a problem without having at least three possible solutions.

So, let’s face the music. The next time you have the opportunity, ask your employee, “What one thing do I don’t want to hear?”

Question 2. “What if …..?”

That’s a beautiful way to start a question. What if …..

I like it because it is coming from curiosity.

Examples are:

“What if you approach that person in another way?” or
“What if we decide to reprioritize?”

Question 3. “How might you…?”

This is another stellar opening. What I like about it is that it gives the ownership to the person who is asked the question. And the opening gives space with the word “might.” It is used to express possibility.

Examples of finished questions: