Leading with powerful questions

Best of HigherEDge, first published on December 13, 2013

If you’ve followed our blog for any period of time, you’ll note that I’m a fan of asking good questions. It’s an essential part of leading effectively. While I don’t always succeed in asking the right question at the right moment, I’m always working at that particular skill. The post below from my colleague Dee Anne Bonebright challenges leaders to ask thought-provoking questions that will generate productive dialogue. – Anita Rios

In my last post, I talked about the importance of asking good questions. This can seem obvious, but I’ve found it to be very difficult in practice.  As leaders, it’s easy to believe that we are asking thought-provoking questions, while in reality others see them differently.  How often have you heard people say “He asked for our opinion, but I know the decision was already made.”

Asking powerful questions is one of the most effective ways to involve stakeholders in decisions that affect them, and to increase buy-in to the decision once it’s made. As I’ve been learning more about the art of asking questions, a colleague shared an excellent resource created by the World Cafe and Pegasus Communications: The Art of Powerful Questions. I highly recommend the entire article.  As a sample, here are some questions they recommend to help leaders frame questions that will generate productive dialogue:

• Is this question relevant to the team’s goals?
• Do I genuinely not know the answer?
• What do I want to happen as a result of the question?
• Is the question likely to generate new trains of thought or new directions?
• Is this question likely to generate creative action?
• Is it likely to generate more questions?

As I prepare to lead meetings, I’ve been challenging myself to be intentional about the questions I’ll ask. It really makes a difference in what I bring to the table and in the outcomes that are generated.

Einstein is supposed to have said that if he had only one hour to solve a life-threatening problem, he’d spend the first 55 minutes forming the right question, because then the problem could be solved in the remaining 5 minutes. How much time do you typically spend forming the right question?

–Dee Anne Bonebright