Questions light the path for leader's learning

Questions are a leader's sensing system. Asking great questions, actively listening to questions, and clarifying questions help you better understand needs. Read on to learn why questions matter.

Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash

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When leaders communicate the big bets they seek to achieve—whether big initiatives or important outcomes — for the organisation to mobilise, they are often faced with one of two responses: lots of questions or not enough questions.

Both can be unnerving.

How we respond in either situation defines the organisation’s culture and is critical to our success as leaders. Failing to address either situation adequately can start a negative cycle, eroding alignment and empathy between leaders and the team.

Furthermore, how leaders use questions in each context can help determine how connected they remain to the organisation’s state and understand what is needed to succeed.

The power of questions and curiosity

Once we have an idea in our head, it's natural for it to become entangled with assumptions, ideas about how it might be implemented, biases, and all manner of things that could impact its effectiveness.

Attachment ideas may prevent us from being open to hearing others' ideas, which can help the organisation. It might also prevent us from getting feedback, which can improve our ideas.

Questions encourage more information and feedback to come forth, and when combined with actively listening to understand, they might reveal new details that challenge your assumptions.

When the teams you are working with have been closer to the problems and the customer needs than you, it should be the case that they know the problem space better than you. If you are worried there are decisions they would make that are not in the organisation's best interests, you should be thinking about what context you have that they don’t have that leads to that difference. And then work hard to close that information gap.

If you are genuinely curious, your questions will help you detect misalignment or information you may be missing and, in turn, ask more questions to better understand.

When your team respond with questions (or don’t!)

When sharing updates about the company, such as new or updated goals, there’s a spectrum of responses, and for many companies, the experience is likely at the two extremes.

1. The unnerving deluge of questions or,

2. the equally unnerving complete lack of questions.

Let’s explore both extremes to understand why they occur and how leaders’ responses can influence future behaviours.

The feelings questions from your team can evoke

Regardless of the leader’s experience, I have observed that questions about the current strategy or purpose of a stated initiative can trigger a defence mechanism that leads to poor responses on behalf of the leader.

The leader may see questions related to relevant risks or details that need clarifying as challenging the direction and potentially undermining confidence. They worry that acknowledging the inherent uncertainty in any idea might weaken it.

This can lead to leaders dismissing issues, covering them up with excessive positivity, or even debating the concerns of those who raise them.

For the team, this instantly instils the following feelings:

• Not being heard.

• There’s something to hide.

• Feeling unsafe and the potential for there to be ramifications when speaking up.

• Being gaslit - i.e. being told issues they can see and feel are not there.

The importance of active listening and acknowledgement

For any feedback or questions, it's critical first to acknowledge the input and, through actively listening and asking clarifying questions, ensure you understand the issue well and why it's important to the asker.

It helps to:

• Restate the issue as you understand it in your own words and allow further details to be clarified should there be differences in understanding.

• Acknowledge the potential impact on the individual and any feelings it may invoke in them. For instance, any possible change may evoke fear and uncertainty in people. It may translate into a loss of status, increased inconvenience, or something more serious, such as a risk to their role and livelihood.

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Why may there be a lack of questions

When it's unclear why an organisation is doing what it's doing, the cycle of sharing and questions can devolve into antagonism. I’ve witnessed this where the organisation knew it should be providing opportunities to ask questions but hadn’t made much effort to ensure there was a system to acknowledge, analyse, plan and follow through on addressing concerns raised.

The result can be frustration and the feeling that asking questions is pointless or may result in punitive action. Eventually, people stop asking questions or making suggestions when that is the case.

Some leaders — and I’ve seen this across both inexperienced and experienced leaders — receive questions as if they were a referendum on their decision-making abilities. As a result, leaders can come across as being:

1. dismissive

2. or worse, on the counterattack (and even worse, some fragile leaders will remonstrate the question asker later),

3. and the lack of acknowledgement of the question and demonstration of their understanding of why the concern is significant to employees,

4. Lack of engagement on why the communicated direction has been chosen can cause the employees to focus on why other options aren't being considered.

Ultimately, these leadership behaviours can lead to a loss of safety amongst the team when asking questions and sharing ideas, eventually leading to these no longer being raised in the organisation's public forums.

What can we do to ensure a healthy culture of asking questions?

1. Repairing when questions have stopped

2. Approach in public forums

3. Using questions in 1-1’s

4. Tips on using questions in small group settings