Have you ever known a leader or manager who was an expert questioner? It seems like some people have the rare and valuable skill of being able to ask the right question at the right time. You go to them to approve a proposal and they get right to the heart of the matter. Or, you need advice about a situation and they ask you questions that get you to see things from a different perspective and find your own solution.
These people seem to have a natural knack, but nobody is born fully equipped to ask the right questions for every situation. It’s a skill that only looks effortless because it has been developed over years of experience, practice, and maybe even formal training. As you go through your business and personal life, you may pick up the skill by trial and error, learning which questions seem to get the best results, or you may develop the critical thinking skills that allow you to spot the weaknesses in a proposal, or you may evolve standard algorithms/checklists for specific situations, over time you accumulate a toolkit of effective questions.
You need a complete toolkit because you face a variety of tasks, and the types of questions that work very well for one task may be exactly the wrong ones you need in another. For example, the questions that find flaws in a proposal may be helpful if you’re a CFO deciding how to allocate resources, but they will get you thrown out the door if you’re a salesperson.
Fortunately, a lot of smart people have developed excellent questioning protocols and have written about them, which allows everyone to cut the time and pain needed to develop and practice the skills.
A complete questioning toolkit addresses the major tasks that a leader has. Here are some:
Decision-making and problem-solving questions are used to make sure you’re getting the best thinking out of your people, so that you can make the best possible decisions. I’m biased because I teach it, but the best set of questions I have come across for this are Vervago’s Precision Questions, which comprises seven categories of questions, arranged under these general questions:
- Do we talk about this now?
- What do you mean?
- What are you assuming?
- How do you know?
- What caused it?
- What are the effects and consequences?
- What should we do?
Persuasive questions are used to get people to talk themselves into the direction or solution you want by making it their idea. Whether it’s motivational interviewing used by psychologists, or some variant of SPIN questioning, the basic aim is to bring out gaps between what is and what could be and guide the answerer in the right direction:
- What are you doing today and/or what would you like to be doing?
- What needs to change to improve the situation or to achieve your goals?
- What happens if you don’t?
- What do you need to do next?
Coaching questions are used to develop your people. They’re similar to persuasive questions, in that they are meant to steer the conversation toward change talk, preferably making it the answerer’s idea so that they are more likely to fully commit to it. The principal difference is that the initial questions are used to test the perception of the person being coached to assess whether they know their current behavior needs to be changed. There are many different effective models, such as the GROW model:
- Goals: Where do you want to be?
- Reality: How far away are you from your goal?
- Obstacles/options: What obstacles are in your way and what options can you think of to remove them?
- Way forward: What specific action steps will you take?
Columbo questions are not a formal questioning process, but I’ve learned from being on the receiving end that they can be the most effective general questioning technique of all. Inspired by the famous TV detective, they are merely the application of intense curiosity and almost naïve simplicity:
I’m not sure I get it, could you please explain it again?
How does that work?
Probes are different from these other questions in that they are more reactive, following the thread of the conversation, and because they are useful for all purposes. Here are three simple types that you can use to squeeze the juice out of just about any conversation:
- Clarify: Can you explain what you mean? Can you give me an example?
- Dig: Can you give me more detail about that?
- Extend: What else?
This is not meant to be a complete list of all type of questions for all occasions, but if you can master these you will be one of the people who come to mind when others are asked who is the best questioner they know.
Do you wear your authority for all to see?
Congratulations, you’re now in charge. Maybe you’ve been promoted to sales manager; or maybe you’re now a general manager or even CEO. With all that newly-issued authority, things are going to be much easier—no more selling for you; now you can just tell people what to do and it will get done, right? You get to set the vision, craft the strategy, and make the big decisions; everyone else’s job is to get on board and make it happen.
If so, you’re making the same mistaken assumption that Dwight Eisenhower did. After a lifetime in the military, he was used to issuing orders and being reasonably confident that they would be followed. As President, he found that the order was only the beginning, not the end. If so, you’re making the same mistake that I’ve seen in some sales organizations I work with. When I warn sales leadership that implementing a new sales methodology can be difficult, most of them confidently tell me that they will mandate its use, as if that is all that needs to be done.
Authority is like a life jacket. It will keep you afloat in a pinch, but if you need it, you’re already in trouble. And when you’re not in trouble, it just slows you down. Although safety experts recommend that you keep an actual life jacket on or nearby at all times while on the water, leaders should reach for their authority only as a last resort.
The old “Because I said so” model just does not work anymore. It might have worked when managers did the thinking and employees did the manual labor (and even then it had its limitations), but today almost everyone is a knowledge worker, and often they know more than you do about their jobs. Smart bosses surround themselves with even smarter people, but smart people don’t want to be led by you or anyone else—they want you to create the conditions where they can do their thing without being bothered.[1]
There’s also a big generational shift going on. Millenials are much more likely to question why they should do something. With jobs being scarce, they might keep their questions to themselves, but you can be sure that if the question is rattling around in their minds it can drag down their performance.
Finally, in today’s business environment things are too complex, and are moving and changing too fast for any one person to know and control everything. You simply can’t be there to exercise your authority when people need to decide and act; you have to trust them to act on their own initiative, in line with your strategies, intentions, and values.
Authority may in the short run get you the performance and effort you demand, but only persuasion gets you discretionary effort, where people do more than asked because they want to, not because they have to. Only persuasion works when you’re not around, or when you run out of sticks and carrots.
So, what does this mean to you? In short, you still need to sell, explain, and inspire. The tools that you use to persuade are more important than ever.
Listening: If you’re the boss, you need to listen more, not less. Research shows that people in authority tend to discount others’ advice[2], and 360° feedback programs show that leaders rate themselves as much better listeners than their subordinates do. Are you learning from others, or do you think you know it all? Are you making it safe for others to disagree or to bring bad news?
Asking: Are you immediately solving problems, or are you asking questions to help people solve the problems themselves? Are your questions driven by genuine curiosity, or are they directives dressed as questions? (Leading questions are bad, don’t you agree?)
Telling: Are you communicating frequently? Are you framing your communications in terms that tap into intrinsic motivation? Are you clear? Do people know where they stand with you? Are you consistent?
Acting: Do your actions match your words? Are you setting the example that you want others to follow? Do you follow up on what subordinates tell you?
Where did the failure occur?
Communication is often viewed as one of those “soft” skills that every reasonably educated person should already be good at, especially managers and senior leaders who have been around for a while. If that is true, why do so many management strategies and plans go undone? Why do so many good ideas and great products go unsold? Why do we have so many failures to communicate?
I recently came across the following, which was attributed to Konrad Lorenz. It’s quite profound, and is itself a wonderful example of clear and concise communication.
- What is thought is not said
- What is said is not heard
- What is heard is not understood
- What is understood is not believed
- What is believed is not yet advocated
- What is advocated is not yet acted on
- What is acted on is not yet completed
Is it possible that communication is actually one of the hardest skills of all?
Clueless
Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, is not happy that Paul Ryan likes his band. Morello says Ryan “is clueless” about the band and what its lyrics stand for.
I’m even more clueless, because until today I had barely heard of RATM, and had never heard of Morello.
But the most clueless in this scenario is Morello, along with so many other entertainers who get upset when “the wrong people” like their music or when they take meaning form their lyrics that was never intended. Springsteen is embarrassed that Chris Christie is one of his most ardent fans, and while I love Jimmy Buffett and would love to sit down and have a margarita with him, I would be very careful not to discuss politics. (Although we do agree on manatees.)
Here’s a newsflash for musicians—and for everyone else: once the message leaves your lips, it doesn’t belong to you anymore.
Your message does not belong to you anymore. Once your message hits your listeners’ brains, it ricochets wildly around their existing attitudes, models and memories, finally coming to rest who knows where. Communication is about your listener. Every listener is different from you in some way, so there is always a certainty that they will interpret your message at least slightly differently than you intended. Multiply that by thousands of fans, and you have an almost infinite number of varied interpretations.
Would Jesus recognize the interpretation of his message today? Would Lincoln, or Gandhi?
So, what does this mean to you as a communicator?
- Unlike a rock star, you can make the effort to learn and understand as much as possible about your audience to make sure your message is tailored for the best fit.
- Unlike a rock star, you have the advantage of being able to pay attention to your listener, to ask questions, or to reframe or rephrase your message as necessary.
- Unlike a musician, you’re not solely in transmission mode all the time—or are you?
