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?

16 Dumb Questions You’re Afraid to Ask

The hardest question to ask is the obvious one. Fearful leaders remain silent. Courageous leaders ask.

1. What are we doing?
2. Compared to what?
3. Who said?
4. Why not? Move from “either/or” to “and” by asking, “Why not?”
5. What problem are we solving?
6. What’s working? How? Why?
7. Begin agenda items by asking, “What questions should we ask?”
8. What are our values? When employees cut themselves, values should come out.
9. Which of our values is driving this decision? How?
10. Where are we going?
11. Who are we?
12. How does this take us where we want to go?
13. Who is our customer?
14. What value do we deliver?
15. How are we communicating our value to customers? Unperceived value isn’t valuable.
16. How am I doing?

Bonus: What are we afraid to ask?

Power:

The best way to challenge the status quo is with questions. Dumb questions test basic assumptions. But, fear of looking dumb makes us ignorant.

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question,” Decouvertes.

When you think you know, assume you don’t.

Questions create confusion initially
and end confusion eventually.

Bonus tip #1: Ask questions that lead to action. Knowledge emerges when people take uncertain action.

Bonus tip #2: Always follow questions with silence.

Interested in more: Read Facebook responses to: “Leaders should ask stupid questions like _______.”

How have dumb questions helped you?

What dumb question can you suggest?

One Question for All Complainers and Critics

Get out of leadership if criticism and complaints keep you up at night. You’ll die from lack of sleep.

The toughest criticism to handle is directed at a team mate or colleague, not you. Some “loving” critic shares a “helpful” suggestion that tears down, points out inadequacy, or undermines credibility.

Complainers, on the other hand, are different from critics. Complainers say, “Your team leader hurt my feelings,” for example. They don’t say it directly but, in the end, complainers aren’t getting what they feel they deserve. They want something for themselves. (They may be on target.)

Critics focus on others. Complainers focus on themselves.

The hardest part of criticisms
and complaints is the 10% that’s right.

First:

Define the win.

Avoid every activity that doesn’t have clearly defined and agreed upon wins. Ambiguous outcomes never satisfy. Watch for that bad taste or rotten smell that saturates winless activities.

All wins always propel
people and organizations forward.

All wins always have
behavioral – visible – expressions. You see them.

Criticisms and complaints spiral downward until progress is defined.

Reject:

Never affirm speculations about bad motives.

Some complainers love explaining the bad motives and intentions of others. Immediately reject hints and innuendos that your colleague intentionally harmed others. The moment you hear, “They did that because (fill in malicious intention),” know you’re dealing with an ass.

Step back and watch a line in the sand appear at the hint a member of my team has malevolent motives.

Human:

Courageously build human environments that make room for imperfection. People have frailties and inadequacies; they screw up.

Progress is a win in human organizations;
perfection a myth.

Close the doors and go home if perfection is the goal.

Question:

Answer criticisms and complaints about colleagues and teammates with,

“How can I help you with this?”

Asking this question:

1. Takes people seriously.
2. Searches for wins.
3. Expresses compassion.
4. Assigns responsibility.

How can leaders respond when they receive complaints or criticisms of teammates or colleagues?

Next week’s best leadership development opportunity is a free conference call with bestselling author, Doug Conant. Join me on March 27 at 1:00 p.m. EST.

Seven Proven Strategies for Dealing with Liars

Image source by George Hodan

Leaders lie because they don’t care enough to tell the truth. It’s too much trouble convincing know-it-alls, for example, so they smile and let them believe they’re right. They say, “That sounds fine.” But they’re shading the truth.

Leaders lie to:

1. Build image.
2. Save face.
3. Prevent turmoil.
4. Solve conflict.
5. Distract or misdirect.
6. Manipulate others.
7. Protect information.
8. Put others down.
9. Elevate stocks.
10. Deceive themselves.

Bonus: Lying leaders pretend they know when they don’t. (One of the dumbest lies.)

Leaders believe lying is wrong but do it anyway.

Lying is always about some form of advantage.

Liars place their interests ahead of yours.

Bosses promise raises but don’t intend to deliver. Employees say they’ve done it when they haven’t. (See: The first lie I told at work.)

Seven strategies for dealing with liars:

1. Act quickly. Time is the liar’s friend.
2. Develop skepticism. Always begin with empathy, but, tender hearts are vulnerable to lies.
3. Be interested. Expose liars by asking questions like: How do you know? Who did you speak with? When did that happen? Who was there? What happened next?
4. Include others. Don’t talk to liars alone, have witnesses.
5. Validate by communicating with email.
6. Protect yourself. Don’t lie but don’t tell everything, either. Vulnerability is stupid when dealing with liars.
7. Confront liars you love. I know, we’re supposed to love everyone. Don’t lie to yourself, you don’t.

Bonus: Cultivate transparency – speak publicly – avoid unnecessary secrets. Tell all involved, who does what by when, for example.

Related posts:

12 True Behaviors that Expose Liars

Lying at work

Top Ten Lies Leaders Tell Themselves

See the growing list of responses on Facebook to the fill-in: Leaders lie because ______.

How can leaders deal with liars?

Three Qualities Traditional Leaders Reject

Image source by Petr Kratochvil

Regurgitating and recycling what you already know bores others, antiquates leadership, and destroys organizations.

Get out of yourself before you shrivel and die.

Growth, innovation, and future-building centers on what you don’t know and haven’t done.

Three surprising qualities of growing leaders:

#1. Receptivity:

Traditional leaders are unwelcoming. Traditional leaders expect you to receive their ideas; they don’t receive yours. Power, prestige, and position thrive in unreceptive, threatening environments.

Tell-me-more leaders, go further than,
I-already-know leaders.

Stop looking down your nose at outsiders, front line employees, and new hires. Adapt to them; don’t force them to adapt to you.

Growth lies around and outside.

#2. Withholding judgment:

Traditional leaders make judgments; growing leaders withhold judgment.

Judgment crushes baby ideas.

Quick minded decision makers inadvertently destroy growth. Stow what you think you know in the attic. Judgment ends growth and begins stagnation.

Keep in mind, stability requires decision making. Withhold judgment, don’t end it completely.

#3. Curiosity:

Traditional leaders fear looking foolish. They need to know. Curiosity celebrates what isn’t known. Courageously look foolish.

Emptiness is opportunity.

The downside of curiosity:

1. People want to know what you know as well as what you don’t.
2. Questions feel pushy and threatening when filled with expectation.
3. Constant curiosity spirals inward and downward.
4. Creating options causes confusion.

Curiosity is a means not an end. Use curiosity to challenge stagnant ideas and disrupt antiquated systems.

Most importantly, curiosity unearths new goals and next steps. Curiosity builds the future. On the other hand, curiosity without progress is stagnating indulgence.

What traditional leadership qualities stunt growth and innovation?

What leadership qualities inspire growth, innovation, and future-building?

Something Better than “I think I Can”

Traditional wisdom says self-affirmation builds optimism and confidence. Dispel doubt, discouragement, and fear by repeating things like: “I’m awesome.” “I can do this.”

What if the Little Engine that Could – “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” – was wrong?

Self-question rather than self-affirm:

Best selling author, Daniel Pink undermines traditional, “I think I can,” philosophy in his new book, “To Sell is Human.”

Traditional wisdom suggests, “Declaring an unshakable belief in your inherent awesomeness inflates a sturdy raft that can keep you bobbing in an ocean of rejection.

Alas, the social science shows something different…” Daniel Pink.

Children’s author, Shel Silverstein agrees when he says, “thinking you can just ain’t enough.”

Can I?

Pink explains that asking, “Can I do this?” is more powerful than repeating, “I can do this.” (Apologies to positive self-talkers – supportive research)

“Declarative self-talk risks bypassing one’s motivations. Questioning self-talk elicits the reasons for doing something and reminds people that many of those reasons come from within.” Daniel Pink.

Ask, “Can I do this?” before facing your next challenge and jot down the reasons you can.

Stop repeating, “I’m confident,” when you’re not. There’s something better than, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” Pink says Bob the Builder nails it when he asks, “Can we fix this?”

One more step – Developing others:

Spend more time asking, “How can you do this?” and less on, “I believe in you.” It’s true that believing in others enhances their confidence. Believing in others more than they believe in themselves is part of leadership. Pink suggests that asking rather than telling enhances confidence.

Buy: “To Sell is Human.”

How might self-questioning result in confidence?

How might asking, “How can you do this?” apply to parenting, dealing with colleagues, young leaders, or employees?

Assumptions – Asking the Obvious

Testing assumptions makes you look stupid or misinformed.

“You can be perfectly clear and perfectly wrong.”
Karen Martin, “The Outstanding Organization.”

Assumptions are unquestioned “truths.” Everyone knows the answer to the obvious. Why don’t you?

Assumptions create false confidence by preventing obvious questions.

Unquestioned assumptions
ultimately distill into malaise.

Finding clarity is simple. Ask obvious questions that probe assumptions. In other words, ask questions that make you look dumb.

Asking the obvious:

Successful leaders persistently challenge assumptions with simple questions. Four questions enable organizational clarity. Don’t assume the answers are obvious.

1. Who is your external customer?
2. What value do you deliver to that customer?
3. Who, in your company, delivers that value?
4. How do they deliver that value?

Bonus: How do you communicate your value to current customers?

Clarity concerning customers:

Karen suggests asking:

1. Who do you serve?
2. How do they make money?
3. What problem are you solving for them?
4. Why do they choose your company…?
5. How do they use the goods or services you provide?

Clarity concerning value:

“Hallmark may produce greeting cards, but its value lies in helping people communicate a feeling….” Karen Martin.

Conversations that distinguish value from product enlighten organizations to their purpose. Karen says shifting from product to value reflects a shift in perspective.

• Product question: “What do we make?”
• Value question: “What do they get?”

Others explain your value. You can’t.

Clarity through conversation:

Karen suggests conversations produce clarity. When was the last time you sat with a customer to get to know them?

Clarity through failure:

A client of mine lost a client, recently. Rather than writing them off, they met with them to explore what went wrong. The value they didn’t deliver explains the value they must deliver. (Assuming that client is one they want to serve.)

Read chapter one of Karen’s book: “The Outstanding Organization.” Absolutely no obligation or email required.

How have you seen or experienced the danger of assumptions?

How can leaders uncover assumptions and create clarity?

The Feedback Question that Changes Everything

When was the last time you received useful feedback?

Everyone who craves excellence craves feedback. You need to know how you’re doing and how to improve.

You’ll never reach excellence without feedback.

Honesty is problem one:

The higher you go the more likely people say what they’re expected to say, not what they believe. Honest feedback is rare.

Asking is problem two:

Jim Kouzes said nearly two million people had taken their 360-degree feedback tool. The statement that consistently receives the lowest rating is, “Asks for feedback on how his/her actions affect other people’s performance.”

You don’t receive feedback because you don’t ask.

Asking:

Great feedback begins with great questions. “How am I doing?” is not a great beginning.

Specific performance feedback:

1. What do you think I was trying to accomplish by the way I ______? (Fill in the blank with an outcome, “Led the meeting,” for example.)
2. What did I do that made you think I was ______? (Fill in the blank with their response to #1.)
3. How could I better accomplish _______?
4. What should I keep doing?

Global role-feedback:

Ask these questions without mentioning specific outcomes.

1. What do you think/perceive I am trying to accomplish as a _____? (Leader, manager, coach, spouse, etc.)
2. What am I doing that makes you think I’m trying to accomplish _____?
3. How could I improve what you think I’m trying to accomplish?
4. “How/where do you fit into what I’m trying to accomplish?” (Nathan, Thanks for giving me this powerful question.)
5. How can I help you better fit in?

The feedback question that changes everything uses behaviors to identify what’s really going on. It doesn’t begin with a list of job responsibilities.

How can leaders invite feedback?

What questions invite useful feedback?

The Secret to Creating the Future

Frustrated leaders spend far too much time focused on the past and far too little time creating the future. They’re always saying, “What are we doing wrong?” The past cannot be changed. Stop trying to fix it.

If you don’t have clear vision for the future,
looking back destroys you.

Your past can be:

1. A distraction from the present and future. Longing for the past destroys the future.
2. An object of reflection that helps you know and understand yourself and others.
3. An anchor or platform.
4. A teacher that shows you things to repeat and more importantly, things to stop.

Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is create it.” You create the future by building on the past, not fixing it.

How to create your future:

The past is disappointing when things aren’t working in the present. But don’t focus on the past in order to create your future.

Let vision not history create your future.

The first things to ask are, “Where do we want to go and what’s the next step to getting there?” NOT, “What went wrong and how do we fix it.”

The past is useful when you have the future in mind.

When you see frustration or failure ask:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?
2. What are you doing to get where you want to go?
3. What is the next – most useful – thing you can do, right now?
4. What should be stopped? (past)
5. What should be continued? (past)

Focusing on the past only pulls you into the past,
unless you have the future in mind.

What are you trying to do right always precedes what went wrong.

The past is a platform only for those
looking forward; otherwise, it’s an anchor.

The secret to creating the future is first seeing it then looking back.

What future-creating tips can you add?

What role does the past play as leaders build the future?

The Seven Powers of Powerful Questions

Questions are the most powerful statements you make.

1. Questions expose. Your questions tell me who you are.
2. Questions invite thought. Answers end thought.
3. Questions enlighten.

   “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question,” Decouvertes.

4. Questions overcome resistance. People naturally question statements. On the other hand, ask an honest question and people lean in.
5. Questions enable ownership. When I tell you the answer, I own it. If you arrive at the answer, you own it.
6. Questions reveal what matters.

   Ask about what you care about.

7. Questions establish focus.

More on focus:

When I started riding motorcycles, I learned they drifted in the direction I looked. A dangerous thing if you like to look around.

Focus establishes direction.

What you persistently ask about gets done.

Illustration:

An organization that believes in relationship before opportunity could ask their employees for the names of the people they met that day.

Questions express values.

Big question:

During a recent conversation with Scott Cochrane, Executive Director of the Leadership Center Willow Creek Canada, I heard a question that sent chills up my spine.

Scott went to a meeting and asked this compelling, outward facing question, “What do you need to see for our country to change?” I feel purpose behind his words.

Good but not great questions:

1. Declining companies asking, “How can we stop our decline?”
2. Failing leaders asking, “How can we better lead?
3. Inefficient organizations asking, “How can we increase efficiencies?”
4. Financially strapped businesses asking, “How can we make more money?”

If you or your organization is falling short, you may be asking questions that fall short. Ask questions with purpose.

Try asking, “How can we best bring value to those we serve?” for example. You won’t get the right answer until you ask the right question.

Follow Scott Cochrane on twitter: @WScottCochrane

What are the great questions leaders ask?