For Harvard Business Review
Photo: HBR Staff/uncoveredlens/Pexels
Summary:
Especially when they find themselves in the midst of crisis and uncertainty, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions. Asking questions well can put you on the path to solving intractable problems and will also help you connect with others and, counterintuitively, to earn their trust. Those questions should be big in scope: What new opportunities have emerged that we don’t want to miss? How might we use new technologies to change our business model? And you should involve others in answering those questions —employees, stakeholders, and even customers. Doing so can not only help you generate better answers, it can also help you to change your organization’s culture.
Leaders today need to revisit an overlooked skill: asking questions. In my 40 years as an executive and advisor in Silicon Valley, I’ve often seen leaders assume that people look to them for answers — bold assertions that build people’s confidence in their competence. But in reality, that kind of approach erodes trust, especially at a time when so much is manifestly uncertain. You think you have the answers to all important questions? That suggests that you are either clueless — you have no idea how rapidly the world is changing — or that you are lying. In either case, you won’t find that trust that you’ve been looking for….