The 9 great questions real leaders often ask

By Ian Berry © 2005 Ian Berry. All rights reserved. Reprinted by Remacue with permission

Leadership in my view is the art of inspiring people to bring everything they are to everything they do. Leadership falters without management however. Management is the science of making it easy for people to bring everything they are to everything they do.

Leadership and Management are everybody’s business. Leadership and Management are not about title or position; rather they are about who we are and what we do.

Real Leadership boils down to 5 actions: Questioning, Visioning, Engaging, Inspiring and Mentoring. For optimum performance to occur these must be balanced with 5 Real Management actions: Focusing, Systemizing, Following, Measuring and Coaching.

This article is about the Real Leadership action of questioning. Real Leaders are continually asking great questions. As a general rule these great questions centre around self esteem building and performance.

Low self esteem is in my opinion at the heart of world’s greatest problems. Real Leaders ask other people the following questions about a myriad of issues

How do you feel about ..........? What do you think about ..........?

After carefully listening to other people’s responses to these questions, (which means not saying anything while others are speaking) Real Leaders then ask

To negative responses, What would need to happen for you to feel differently about ..........? or What would need to happen for you to think differently about ..........?

To positive responses, How do you intend to continue feeling ..........? or How do you intend to continue thinking ..........?

Fake leaders are seldom interested in what others feel and think and are more interested in how they feel and think. Real Leaders put others first. Fake leaders put themselves first. Fake leaders rarely ask questions prefering to make statements that attempt to make themselves look good or put others in an inferior position.

Other great questions Real Leaders ask are about performance particularly when performance has not met agreed expectations.

Real Leaders ask What happened ..........? and wait for a response. Real Leaders then ask What do you need to do to ensure this doesn’t happen again? and wait for a response. Real Leaders then ask Is there anything I can do to help? and wait for a response. Real Leaders then ask Anything else? and wait for a response.

The above great questions assume there is already agreement around goals and the actions to achieve them. After all disagreement or misunderstandings around these are the biggest causes of human conflict.

Real Leaders generally help people document the actions that come from responses to the above questions and thereby create agreements which act as a great reference point for discussion about performance going forward.

Fake leaders are seldom interested in what happened and are more concerned with who did it. Fake leaders play the shame and blame game whereas Real Leaders are primarily interested in people being the best they can be.

Be As Wise As You Can Be
Ian

Ian Berry is based in Brisbane, Australia. He is the Managing Director of Remacue. Ian works internationally as a business conference and meeting speaker and advisor to business leaders, owners and directors. For information about Ian’s business advisory work visit www.remacue.com For information about Ian’s speaking work visit www.ianberry.au.com