Why Should I Question?

This article tells us why it makes sense to ask the right questions to lead the right way...

‘Bhoruka Steel does it again: It has once again broken its own record and tapped the heat in 55 minutes flat.’ I still remember this ad released by a Bhoruka supplier during the eighties not just because I was working for Bhorukas then but because of the precious lessons I learnt during my initial years of my career there. The most significant one came from the then production head, N R Pai. Every record the melters made is it tapping the heats in record time (heat is the time taken from loading the furnace with raw materials to the time of tapping the liquid metal into the ladle) or reducing the consumption of power or materials, it can be attributed to the leadership of Pai. His style was simple –he had a way of asking questions in a very non-threatening style – to bring out the seemingly irrelevant data, to trigger thinking and to induce learning.

Why and How Leadership:

Bold red-inked ‘why’s marked by Pai in the previous day’s log book would form the basis for most discussions during his meetings. His daily meetings with the shift managers (who took pride in calling themselves melters) would happen during the overlap time of the first and seconds shift. Although night shift in-charges were exempted from the meeting, most often they would find their way to it, not minding their weariness. Pai would swing his whys and hows between metallurgists and melters and thus melding theory and practice. Whys helped in identifying the cause for deviations and bring them into control so that the set standards were always met. When melters performed better than the standards or broke the old records, Pai never forgot to pat their backs. But he did not stop there – he translated the new record into a new learning by asking a series of hows. The learning helped others to replicate the new record and the new record became a new standard.

Leading With Questions

My early lessons on ‘leadership by questioning’ were reinforced when I happened to read the book ‘Leading with Questions’ by Michael Marquardt, an internationally noted educator and consultant. Here are a few things I got from the book:

Leadership is not about knowing all the answers. It’s about knowing what great questions to ask, and carefully listening to those answers. Leadership is about asking great questions – questions that inspire, motivate and empower the organisation. Astute leaders use questions to encourage full participation in teamwork, to spur innovation and outside-the-box thinking, to empower others, to build relationships with customers, to solve problems, and more. Questions wake people up. They prompt new ideas. They show people new places, new ways of doing things. They help us admit that we don’t know all the answers. They help us become more confident communicators.

LWQ provides a comprehensive foundation on ways to employ questions effectively when leading others. The book offers a variety of principles and strategies for asking questions as well as numerous stories on how leaders have used questions to attain organisational success and personal fulfilment.

From an early age, we are discouraged from asking questions, be it at home or school, as they are considered rude, inconsiderate or intrusive. As we ask fewer questions, we become ever less comfortable and competent in asking questions. When we become leaders, we feel that it is important for us to have the answers rather than questions. The failure to ask questions can lead to a distorted sense of reality.

Questioning Culture:

Leaders need to create a questioning climate where employees feel safe and able to trust the system and the people involved. Without this level of safety and comfort, people are generally unwilling to be vulnerable, and to be comfortable answering questions that might seem threatening. Leaders, through questions, can build a culture in which questions are welcomed, assumptions are challenged, and new ways to solve problems are explored. Questions establish an inquiring culture in organisations, and such an inquiry and culture builds a learning organisation.

Questions also build a culture of accountability. When we ask questions of others and invite them to search for answers with us, we’re not just sharing information, we are sharing responsibility. When responsibility is shared, ideas are shared, problems become shared – problems and not yours or mine anymore. Asking questions results in empowerment and shared ownership of results.

Six hallmarks of questioning culture:

When an organisation has a questioning culture, the people in it

• Are willing to admit, “I don’t know.”

• Go beyond allowing questions; they encourage questions.

• Are helped to develop the skills needed to ask questions in a positive way.

• Focus on asking empowering questions and avoid disempowering questions.

• Emphasize the process of asking questions and searching for answers rather than finding the “right” answers.

• Accept and reward risk taking.

Questions serve as the foundation for increasing individual, team, and organisational learning. Learning depends on curiosity and asking questions. Questions, especially challenging ones, cause us to think and to learn. When we open our eyes and minds to the perspective of others, we open ourselves to learning.

Questions encourage and enable individuals and groups to understand, to clarify, and to open up new avenues of exploration for solving problems. They provide new insights and ideas for strategic actions and potential paths for solutions. Questions and responses to those questions provide necessary and valuable information to solve problems faster and make better decisions.

Empowering Questions

A key for leaders in asking questions is contextual:“what do I want my question to accomplish?” One of the reasons that questions cause trouble is that we often ask questions that disempower others, that is, those questions that focus on the reasons why the person did not or cannot succeed, for example: Why are you behind schedule? Empowering questions, on the other hand, get people to think and allow them to discover their own answers, thus developing selfresponsibility and transference of ownership for the results. Empowering questions build positive attitudes and self-esteem. Empowering questions help develop alignment within teams and draw out the optimum performance from individual members and the team as a whole. They create a high-energy, high-trust environment and enable people to identify, clarify, and express their wants or needs. Such questions encourage people to take risks, nurture deep relationships, and dissolve resistance to change.

•How do you feel about the project thus far?

•How would you describe the way you want this project to turn out?

•Which of these objectives do you think will be easiest to accomplish? Which will be the most difficult?

Effective questions:

Effective questions are those that accomplish their purpose as well as build a positive relationship between the questioner and the questioned. There are many types of open ended questions:

Why questions. These are perhaps the most important types of open-ended questions for leaders to ask as these questions force everyone to go into deeper layers of cause and effect, and of purposes and assumptions. When asking why questions, the leaders should watch their tone of voice. The why question should indicate curiosity and the search for knowledge, and not anger or frustration.

Explorative questions, on the other hand, open up new avenues and insights and lead to new explorations: have you explored or thought of ?

Affective questions invite members to share feelings about an issue: How do you feel about leaving this job?

Reflective questions encourage more exploration and elaboration: You said there are difficulties with your manager; what do you think causes these difficulties?

Probing questions invite the person or group to go more deeply into a particular issue. Words such as describe, explain, clarify, elaborate, or expand get into more depth or breadth on a topic.

Fresh questions challenge basic assumptions: has this ever been tried?

Questions that create connections establish a systems perspective: What are the consequences of these actions?

Analytical questions examine causes and not just symptoms: Why has this happened?

Clarifying questions help free us from ambiguity, but such questions are sometimes difficult to ask: What specifically did you mean by that?

Building a Questioning Culture:

The goal for the inquiring leader is to change the corporate culture from one of telling to one of asking, to help everyone see and understand that questions need to become their primary communications tool. How can a leader develop a questioning culture? Here are some strategies that can build a powerful learning and questioning culture:

• Start at the top. The questioning culture must begin with the most senior leaders, who model the frequent use of good questions.

• Create an environment that enables the people to challenge the status quo, take risks, and ask more questions.

• Connect the values and processes of the organisation to the use of questions.

• Optimise the opportunities to ask questions by building questioning into every business activity, including formal and informal meetings, sales calls, and conferences with clients, or presentations.

• Report and appreciate questioners; promote risk-taking and tolerate mistakes.

• Provide training for people to be better at it and more comfortable in asking questions. Successful leaders go beyond asking questions; they work to create an environment in which everyone can ask and be asked questions. This means, first of all, that they focus on fostering a climate where employees still feel safe in asking questions and able to trust the system and the people involved.