“Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers.”
- Voltaire (1694 – 1778), French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian
In the May – June 2024 issue of the Harvard Business Review, three contributors wrote an article, “Asking Better Questions.” It’s sort of a Master Class, I gotta say…
We are so quick to “tell.” Heck, we are taught to tell. Storytelling is one of the tools most critical to a Difference-Maker, yet Voltaire (is it weird that they had historians 400 years ago?) is just as right today as he was in 1778.
The article suggests five types of questions that are critical for leaders to master to get the most out of their teams. Important to note is that our experiential and natural biases need to be reigned in, just as they do when we’re “telling.”
First, we should ask investigative questions. Getting through the Five Why’s helps us clarify our purpose and detail what is known.
Speculative questions — think “What if…?” and “What else…?” help us drive change. There is a great example in the article regarding the New Zealand America’s Cup team that pretty much changed the game.
As business leaders and managers, we often focus on Larry Bossidy’s concept of metrics, milestones and bottlenecks. Bossidy was amazing at productive questioning, and in context, the approach is still important: How can we get it done? How will we synchronize actions? How will we measure progress?
Where science blends with art is when we deploy interpretive questions. This is where we ask, “So, what…?” Drilling down into what the problem’s really about, what happens if a trend continues, what have we learned so far, how is it useful, and, perhaps most important, are we asking the right questions –now we’re playing in the meaningful margins that most of our competitors won’t ever explore.
Finally, subjective questions get the team into what is otherwise unsaid. This is where great coaches separate themselves. We are supporting and coaching in this realm versus monitoring and controlling. The key to success is creating a safe space to discuss, disagree, and encourage divergent viewpoints.
If we are serious about being judged by our questions, we’d better be willing to listen to learn instead of listening to fix. It has been suggested that this is a male-specific trait — yet I wonder if title and rank don’t contribute to our belief that we have to fix whatever is being brought to us regardless of gender. Today, learner mode is at least as valuable as judger mode.
A mentor of mine took down a $1,000 framed picture (in 1988 dollars!) of a golden eagle that had always hung behind my desk, replacing it with an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper with “I don’t know what do YOU think?” handwritten. That was when my career shifted from managing business to creating leaders. That was when making a difference began to matter more to me than making a buck.
Editor’s Note: The Harvard Business Review is a Difference-Making publication. Subscribe. Thank me later.
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