Asking the Right Questions

Before I headed to the airport today, the president of our company, Bob Brady, handed me a book and said something like, “This is a quick read and I really think you’ll enjoy it.” The book he gave me was The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, by Adam Bryant.

Boy, was Bob right.

It’s a very interesting read full of lessons for every manager. All those things you’ve learned the hard way as a manager are covered, as are quite a few others that we all need to discover. As I’m reading, I’m wishing I had heard some of this 25 years ago when I was first starting out, and I’m thinking about who would benefit from reading this book. In addition to a few friends and colleagues, my list includes my 20-year-old son who just wrapped up his second year of college.

It’s that good.

I wasn’t through the first chapter when I came across a great point that really struck home with me. Let me share it with you: “Though CEOs [you can insert managers here] are paid to have answers, their greatest contributions to their organizations may be in asking the right questions — a skill that starts with passionate curiosity.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve worked with plenty of managers who thought they had to have all the answers. I’m not certain what causes this, but I’ve always assumed that it was rooted in a certain amount of insecurity. Instead of being secure enough as a leader to ask questions and cede a certain amount of control to others, they feel like they need to maintain control and provide all the answers.

The reasoning goes, “If everyone would just shut up and do as I say, we’ll save a lot of time and things will go much better.” They each believe they’re the smartest person in the room. Instead of inviting healthy discussion, they want to cut off the conversation and bark instructions.

Here’s what some of the CEOs interviewed by Bryant have to say about this. Tim Brown, CEO of the design consulting firm IDEO says, “As leaders, probably the most important role we can play is asking the right questions.” And Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, adds this: “By asking the right questions, you can get to the heart of the issue right away. It’s almost possible for me to go through a day and do nothing but ask questions and have my sensibility, my perspective, and what’s important to me be perfectly clear to everybody without making a statement at all.”

But for me the one who really nailed it was Ursula M. Burns, the CEO of Xerox. When asked about her role as chief executive, she said, “The job is exactly NOT about having the right answers. The job is having great questions asked and great people helping you answer them.”

Amen.

So stop and think about your own behavior for a minute. How do you manage? Do you ask questions encouraging contributions from everyone? Or, do think you have to provide all the answers?

Here’s a challenge for you. The next time you’re in a team meeting, see if you can make it through the entire session without making a single statement. And I don’t mean sitting silently and not making a contribution. See if you can’t elicit more participation from everyone by asking leading questions that get others to think and come up with answers.

It will take patience. It will take discipline. But I’m confident that you can lead them to the solutions without ever providing an answer — just by asking the right questions. The result will likely be a team with much higher “buy in” regarding whatever solutions the group comes up with.

I can see some of you struggling with this concept, asking yourself, “But how do I know that I’ll like the solutions they come up with?” All I can say is if you ask the right questions, you’ll get the right answer.