The Power of Second Questions

“Most people never listen.” Hemingway

Questions are gifts. Asking, followed by listening, says others matter; telling says you matter.

Eager to talk is reluctant to ask.

Enemies of curiosity:

1. Disinterest. You really don’t care.
2. Need to appear smart.
3. Hurry. The need for speed, at least initially, stifles curiosity.
4. Knowledge. Those who know don’t ask.
5. Answers. Answers end thought.

Pretend you don’t have the answer, you may find another.

Powerful questions:

1. Initiate listening. It’s hard to listen without questions.
2. Call for answers. Questions create curiosity and engage minds.
3. Ignite self-persuasion.
4. Invite connection. Anyone who says they want to connect but never asks questions is confused or deceived about the nature of connecting.
5. Guide conversations. Don’t tell people what to talk about, ask questions.
6. Teach and open minds.
7. Explain priorities. You ask about what matters.

If you want to change results, change questions.

Second questions:

Second questions matter more than first because they explore what matters. First questions address obvious issues. Second questions explore meaning, purpose, method, and/or value.

Exceptional leaders ask second questions.

First question: What’s your mission?
Second question: What makes your mission matter?

First question: Who are your customers?
Second question: What made them become your customers?

First question: What’s frustrating?
Second question: How can you address your frustrations?

Before:

Clarify before answering.

Never simply answer when someone asks, “What’s your story?” Always ask, “What do you want to know?*”

Save time, establish priorities, and narrow focus by inviting questioners to declare themselves.

Answer questions with questions, before giving answers.

Avoid:

Some questions are better than others.

1. What’s wrong with me?
2. What did I do wrong?
3. What went wrong? (KaChing)

A favorite question:

I hear what you don’t want. What do you want?

Added resources:

9 Unexpected Questions that Create Engagement

10 Questions that Give Vitality to Beginnings

15 Questions Guaranteed to Create Clarity

*From: “Power Questions,” by Sobel and Panas

How can leaders learn to ask questions?

What are some useful second questions?

A To-Don’t NOT a To-Do

Even four year olds know that being helped isn’t always helpful. Over eager parents, who step in to “help,” often hear frustrated children say, “I’ll do it myself!”

Never help those who can help themselves.

You got up this morning thinking about things to-do. But, leaders think about things to-don’t. Helpfulness lifted you to leadership but the need to help hampers once you’re there.

The need to help may reflect an unhealthy need to be helpful.

Leaders who need to help are short-sighted unhelpful hindrances who need to feel important.

Step out; don’t step in.

Helping isn’t helpful when it weakens, creates dependencies, or takes responsibility from others.

Delay helping when:

1. Ownership is high. Stepping in undermines ownership.
2. Teams are motivated.
3. Delay shows respect. “I trust you.”
4. Acceptable progress is being achieved.
5. Long-term benefits outweigh short-term results.
6. You questions methods and processes, not outcomes.
7. Struggle strengthens.
8. Teams trust you. They know you have their best interests in mind.
9. Failure humbles.
10. Defeat creates learning moments.

Bonus: Stop helping if helping didn’t help last time.

The goal of helping is enabling, not more helping.

Real help takes people to places where they don’t need help. Sometimes, not helping is helpful.

Help when:

1. Teams need an extra hand because conditions changed.
2. Relationships break down. Help the process.
3. Confusion persists. The great role of leaders is creating clarity.
4. Help “with” not “for.”
5. Helping develops skills.

Frustration:

Monitor frustrations. Acceptable levels of frustration intensify focus and motivate change. Don’t help.

Too much frustration generates relational conflict and paralyzes progress. Step in.

Tip:

Stay near; don’t isolate. Not helping isn’t an excuse to stay distant.

Back to the four year old. They’ll ask for help after they’ve tried, failed, and become frustrated. They respect you when you help after they’ve struggled. But, help before they struggle and they despise and reject you.

When is help, unhelpful?

How do you determine when to step in?

Connecting through Social Contracts

The thought of a thing is often more fulfilling than it’s reality. I wonder if that’s true of social contracts for organizations.

We talk about connecting, but what are we doing to create, deepen, and protect connections.

Talk is self-affirming gibberish without action.

Words or Actions:

Ask leaders if they believe in connecting and they’ll raise their eyes like you’re stupid.

But ask, “What are you doing to help people connect?” and they look stupid.

Stop babbling and create social contracts that define, deepen, and protect relationship within your organization.

How:

Invite everyone to participate in crafting a social contract. Don’t create it for people.

Engage people if you expect them to be engaged.

Develop an agreed upon social contract by addressing topics like:

1. How do you want to be treated by co-workers?
2. How do you want to treat co-workers?
3. Describe unacceptable relationship violations. (How do you not want to be treated?)
4. What is the goal of connecting with co-workers?
5. How can we help people connect?

Define your aspirations for relationship.

Rewards:

Describe rewards, recognition, and honor for outstanding success in upholding social contracts. Dinner out or leave work at noon on Friday, for example.

Violations:

Create agreed upon consequences for violations of your social contract. Focus on fun consequences like paying fines for minor offenses. Don’t wait for big stuff.

Practice:

Start meetings by asking, “Who have you seen upholding our social contract? What did they do?”

Review:

Review your social contract every six months to keep it fresh and top of mind.

Individual:

Build social contracts on an individual level if not organizationally, try addressing topics like:

1. What does support, respect, or encouragement look like to you?
2. I feel connected when…?
3. Our work relationship is strengthened when… (weakened when)
4. I commit to…

I’ve never seen or developed a social contract for an organization. Have you?

What are the pros and cons of developing social contracts? How would you develop and implement a social contract?

Addressing the Rotten-Apple-People Problem

Rotten apples – negative, destructive, self-absorbed, unethical employees – pollute organizations.

Furthermore, foul leaders inevitably build stagnant, foul organizations. Worse yet, passive leaders – those who tolerate rotten apples – create rotten environments by default.

Leaders who tolerate rotten apples are rotten themselves.

Facebook contributors discuss: “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch, true or false?” (5/3/13)

Spotting:

You don’t need a study to determine if your culture sucks.

1. People use blind copies in email.
2. Gossips win.
3. Territorial managers stake out and protect turf.
4. Leaders live in ivory towers.
5. Competition is about winners and losers not performance.
6. Getting by is the goal.
7. Smiles and laughs are rare.

Your culture sucks if people don’t love working in it.

Solving:

Organizational culture is simply the way you do things – how people treat each other. Yesterday, a Leadership Freak contributor suggested social contracts. KaPow!

Social contracts say you’re serious
about the way you do things.

Social contract:

We will:

1. Address issues in the smallest context possible. Dirty laundry is kept in the laundry room.
2. Expect you to connect with colleagues and teammates.
3. Take responsibility to improve things we don’t like.
4. Pursue the best interests of all parties, always.
5. Call you out if you let others down.
6. Speak candidly with compassion.
7. Forgive offenses that are acknowledged and addressed.

We won’t:

1. Say one thing to your face and another behind your back.
2. Tolerate posturing and puffing behaviors.
3. Lie, ever.
4. Blow up.
5. Hold grudges.
6. Have secret agendas.
7. Complain without bringing solutions.

Consequences:

Violating our social contract is grounds for warnings, corrective action, and dismissal, if necessary. You might be sent to our, “Be Nice,” class for social delinquents.

Enforcement:

Everyone is authorized to point out violations of social contracts, regardless of position or tenure.

More: Connecting Through Social Contracts.

What would you include in an organizational social contract?

Confronting Toxicity

Average leaders feel successful when they get things done.

Exceptional leaders feel successful when they build exceptional places to work.

Average leaders fix and do. Exceptional leaders build.

You begin thinking leadership is all about results but come to learn it’s about the way we treat each other. Results matter, but how you achieve results matters more. “Results only” is the formula for toxicity.

When all that matters are the numbers,
eventually, people don’t matter.

Great places to work are about the way things get done.

How not what:

Exceptional leaders focus on how.

1. How are we connecting?
2. How do we support each other?
3. How does the team feel?
4. How is respect expressed?

Exceptional leaders define “the way” things get done. Courageous leaders challenge back-stabbing and office politics, for example. They say, “That’s not the way we do things around here.”

Evaluate:

Organizations that neglect how things get done become lousy places to work. Frankly, soft-skills are hard. When was the last time you worked on:

1. Breaking silos. People in other departments aren’t the enemy.
2. Confronting rudeness, anger, or disrespect.
3. Creating cross-functional connections.
4. Good manners.
5. Compassionate interactions.
6. Morale.
7. Happiness. Organizations that don’t work on happiness end up unhappy.

Action:

The next time colleagues put each other down, step in and say, “We don’t do that around here.”

Toxic environments are the result of tolerating toxicity.

What you won’t tolerate is only part of the picture. Define and model what you expect, as well. Courageous leader define the “way we do things around here.”

Finally, act decisively to honor or punish. Terminate unrepentant jerks and reward kindness, for example.

Courageously:

1. Define the way you do things.
2. Hire people who fit.
3. Fire people who don’t fit.
4. Reward desired behaviors even if they don’t deliver results directly.

Success is more than what gets done, it’s how things get done, too.

How can leaders define “the way we do things?”

How would you build a connected organization?

Don’t Go with Your Gut

Everyone has an inner voice, intuition, or feelings that something is right or wrong. Your gut could be wrong. Don’t trust it.

Ask the poker player who went all-in and lost. What about the manager who felt great about hiring a job applicant that didn’t work out. Have you ever felt you were driving in the right direction when you were lost?

One of the worst things the gut tells extroverts is keep talking.

Evaluate your gut when:

1. You feel like you’re contributing more than your teammates.
2. Topics are outside your expertise.
3. Assigning blame.
4. You haven’t taken time for self-reflection.

Right:

I talked with Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., about when to trust our gut. She said, for those who take time to self-reflect, listen to your gut when it comes to values and passions. She emphasized the importance of self-reflection.

Wrong:

“Where our intuitions fail us is actually on the opposite problem, that is, evaluating where we go wrong… In general we are way too hard on ourselves. We tend to think that we are the problem.”

Dr. Halvorson went on to say, “I’m a big advocate for people being much more self-compassionate than we are… The people who are not horribly self-critical are actually more successful… The lack of self-compassion comes from some of these bad intuitions we have about our failures.”

Failures:

You need more input when it comes to evaluating failures. Don’t go with your gut. Get feedback.

Evaluating your gut:

Explore issues that don’t feel right. Don’t assume something’s wrong. Say, “This doesn’t feel right to me. Tell me more.”

When something feels right ask, “Am I missing something? or What could go wrong?”

Dr. Halverson in her own words on intuition (3:57):

Check out Dr. Halverson’s new book: Focus (Highly recommended)

How do you know when to go with your gut?

Twelve Ways to Spot Fools

Spotting and dealing with fools challenges leaders.

Foolishness has nothing to do with intelligence or talent. Smart, gifted people are prime candidates for foolishness.

Twelve ways to spot fools:

1. Believe they are right.
2. Hate accountability and practical strategies.
3. Love blaming and reject responsibility.
4. Pursue personal ease rather than challenge.
5. Expect you to adapt to them.
6. Reject instruction.
7. Can’t see their foolishness.
8. Express frustrations quickly and openly.
9. Gossip and cut down privately while complimenting publicly.
10. Act confidently.
11. Enjoy talking.
12. Despise listening.

Bonus: Fools don’t seek help. The wise love and seek wisdom. Fools seek their own way because others are wrong and they are right.

Dealing with fools:

Stop talking:

Fools reject responsibility. Stop talking, once you realize you’re dealing with a fool. Talking doesn’t help. They love talking and are usually good at it. Talking drags you into the fool’s world.

Set limits:

Say, “You haven’t delivered agreed upon results. When I bring it up, all I hear are excuses and blaming. You don’t take responsibility. I’m giving this project to Mary.”

They’ll be angry and blame you, but don’t back down. You become the problem when you hold their feet to the fire. Fools despise you when you correct them. They feel you don’t understand.

Set limits for their good and the organization’s. Talking won’t help; limits might.

Establish consequences:

1. Reassignments.
2. Remove responsibilities.
3. Demotions.
4. Unpaid leave.
5. Termination.

Fools undermine your leadership, destroy morale, and reject feedback. Deal quickly and firmly with fools, regardless of their talent.

Not fools:

Work with people who receive instruction and adapt behaviors. Express patience. Help them succeed. But, those who reject instruction, limits, and consequences are fools, reject them.

How do you deal with foolishness in yourself?

How can leaders deal with fools?

When Teammates Collide

Forward-focused teammates clash with foot-draggers.  But, foot-draggers aren’t the problem.

My approach to an opportunity is grab it and go. Planning isn’t high on my list. I know it’s important but can’t we plan as we go. “Just do something” is my motto. Build the airplane in the air.

“Just do something people” drive planners crazy. But “just do something” isn’t the problem.

Example:

A planner on my team sent me an e-mail that included, “I don’t want to frustrate you.” I was pushing for a next step. He was explaining why we can’t move forward, at this time.

Every team experiences collisions between team members pushing for the next thing and those reluctant to move forward.

*Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins explain motivational collisions in their new book, “Focus.” They explain how some tend to promote and others prevent.

Promoters play to win.
Preventers play not to lose.

Preventors prefer to say, “No! to an opportunity, rather than end up in hot water.” Halvorson and Higgins.

Over the years, I’ve seen the weakness of my promoter-focus. I don’t protect gains. Mistakes are no big deal. Planning takes too long. I’m willing to lose what I have – to gain what I don’t.

Promoters tend toward big ideas.
Preventers are great with details.

Motivation:

“For a promotion-focused person, what’s really “bad” is a nongain: a chance not taken, a reward unearned, a failure to advance… But for the prevention-focused, the ultimate “bad” is a loss you failed to stop; a mistake made, a punishment received, a danger you failed to avoid.”

Everyone:

Everyone, according to Halvorson and Higgins, has both motivations and, depending on the context, brings them out. The planner, I mentioned, who didn’t want to frustrate me is a fire-ball-promoter once he sees a path to success, for example.

How might leaders navigate tensions between promoters and preventors?

*Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins lead the Motivational Science Center at Columbia Business School.

Bonus material: Heidi Grant Halvorson in her own words on characteristics of promotion and prevention focus. (4:17)

I Felt Like a Leader But I Wasn’t

Carry-on bags are stowed “below” in small planes where overhead storage is small. After landing, passengers line the jet bridge waiting for their luggage. Most contact friends or chat. People in the back can’t see. Bags pile up. Nobody does anything.

I decided to take matters in hand by holding bags up and calling out last names. Fellow travelers said, “Finally, someone is doing something.” It felt good to help.

Meeting needs makes you valuable.

When my bag arrived, I pulled the handle and walked past the long line of waiting passengers. I felt I’d been useful when I heard someone ask a fellow traveler, “Now what are we going to do?”

I’d done my duty. Besides, my connecting flight was boarding in fifteen minutes. For a moment, I felt like a leader, but I wasn’t.

Leaders mobilize others to meet the needs of others.

Leaders would:

1. Identify fellow passengers with the skill to lift bags and call out names. (talent)
2. Ask, “Do you think we can make this process go quicker?” (mission)
3. Model behavior and then invited capable passengers to help.
4. Affirm helpfulness by thanking helpers.

Successful leaders never hear, “Now what are we going to do?” when they leave.

Leaders enable others to work without them.

I’m glad I did something to help. But, I was mistaken when I felt like a leader. I was an individual contributor.

Individual contributors are essential. They get jobs done. But, individual contributors often think they’re leading when they aren’t. Getting jobs done isn’t leading.

It’s easy to think you’re leading when you’re busy at the center of things. But, enabling and motivating others to perform is leading.

Facebook contributors respond to: “Motivation is the result of _______.”

How can leaders do less so more gets done?

Books for Leadership Freaks

Leaders are learners.

When I’m asked for book recommendations, I always ask, “Have you read, “The Leadership Challenge,” by Kouzes and Posner.

New and recommended:

1. The Secret of Teams
2. Culture Secret
3. Focus
4. To Sell is Human
5. Leadership and the Art of the Struggle
6. The Outstanding Organization
7. Boundaries for Leaders

On the shelf and recommended:

1. Full Steam Ahead
2. The Go Giver
3. TouchPoints
4. Leadership is Dead
5. Yes to the Mess
6. Helping
7. Leapfrogging
8. StrengthsFinder 2.0
9. All Hands on Deck
10. StandOut
11. What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There
12. The Radical Leap
13. The War of Art
14. The Question Behind the Question

I’m not in my office so these books are “top of mind” books. When I actually look on the shelf, I’ll kick myself for not remembering more.

What leadership books do you recommend?