The New Crop: Issue #22
Your leadership superpower: asking great questions
What’s in this issue:
💭 Thought: Your leadership superpower: asking great questions
😆 Today’s Laugh
The Atlanta Braves, a Major League Baseball team in the U.S., runs a competition in between innings where a fan gets to race a man known as “The Freeze” (his real name is Nigel Talton and he was a high school track star). As the video title below suggests, it’s a cold world when you’re racing the Freeze…
Bonus points for anyone who caught the Alanis Morissette reference in the commentary. 🤣
💭 Today’s Thought
A single question, asked by the right person, at the right time, and in the right way can change the course of our perspective (and life).
By way of an example, a couple of years ago, my brilliant coach asked me the question, whose job do you want?
This one question, asked in the most open and honest of ways from someone I deeply trusted and respected, altered my trajectory forever. I’ll always remember how many tears I cried in that session — it was like a deep well of acceptance finally opened up.
How creative, resourceful, and confident we feel is a direct result of the quality of the questions we ask ourselves, and that others ask of us.
Notice what happens within you if you imagine being asked any of these questions:
Why did you do that?
Why haven’t you done that yet?
Did you already try [this other thing/solution]?
You might notice things like: feeling defensive, feeling like you messed up, or feeling like you’re not as good as someone else. (Questions that start with “why” tend to evoke these kinds of feelings, and as a general rule, I try to avoid them.)
Instead, imagine being asked:
Could you tell me more about how you approached that?
What’s getting in the way?
What options have you tried? And what haven’t you tried?
What did you learn?
The most effective questions are both open and honest; they can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”, and you don’t already know the answer to them. They’re asked with a genuine curiosity, free of judgement.
If you lead a team, your ability to ask open and honest questions is a subtle superpower that can at once dramatically enhance your relationship with your direct reports, build up their creativity, resourcefulness, and confidence, and help you discover new approaches and perspectives.
This week, I invite you to spend some time noticing the kinds of questions you ask — of yourself and others — and consider: how might you enhance the quality and impact of the questions you’re asking?
If you’d like to dive deeper on this topic, here are some of my favorite resources:
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
🖊️ Today’s reflection
If you’re new to journaling, I highly encourage you to read Nancy Adler’s article: Want to be an outstanding leader? Keep a journal.
This week, find a quiet place and gift yourself 10 minutes to reflect on any of these prompts (or invent your own!):
What’s a time when someone asked you a question that caused a meaningful shift in your perspective, experience, or life? What was it about that question that led to that shift?
In what situations do you tend to ask questions and in what situations do you tend to withhold questions, or lean on offering advice or solutions instead?
What are 3-5 open and honest questions you might keep in your back pocket, to use with your team or peers?
📚 Today’s Read
The GROW Model of Coaching and Mentoring
If you lead a team, chances are high that you at times find yourself in a position where you need to provide some form of coaching or mentoring to others. But how? The GROW Model is beautifully straightforward (though it takes practice!), and offers a nice framework for structuring a coaching conversation in which you’re supporting a team member to clarify their goals, options, and next steps. Check it out!
See you next week!
xo,
Anne