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Glenn Brooke | December 12, 2015 | Leave a Comment

How to Ask Better Questions

Leaders must be experts in asking excellent questions – it’s how we engage with people, draw them out, and it is one of the best ways to help them.

Asking better questions is simply a matter of checking your assumptions and practice. Here are six helps:

  1. Rotate your perspective: What concerns does your customer have? Your boss? Your peers? Others in your work team?
  2. Test different timescales: Near term, longer term. What new problems will come later? Once you make a decision and begin to act, what forces will come up as counter? (As they say in the military, “the enemy gets a vote on your plan.”)
  3. Put on your Project Manager hat: Ask about scope, duration, and resource needs (and what level of focus).
  4. Query about options/alternatives: Compared to what? What else might be considered? Inquire about plan B. What assumptions were made?
  5. Check the emotions involved: Ask how people feel about it – scary good or scary bad? It’s not enough to get the facts, ma’am, you should test emotional content.
  6. Use the WW___A strategy (“What would ____ ask?”): Pay attention to what other leaders ask, and how they ask. Become a student of other leaders. Some people are so good at asking questions they no longer are conscious of why they’re asking. Observe, and when they ask a particularly good question, ask them why they asked it.

Don’t be fearful of asking many questions. Conscious practice will lead you to get better at this critical leadership skill. 

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Filed Under: Leadership

Glenn Brooke

Glenn considers leadership a craft which requires dedicated pursuit. The apprentice model (instruction + practice + associating with other craftsmen) is the time-tested way to foster the next generation of leaders. Real leaders never stop working on their craft; there are only new levels of mastery ahead. Learn more at leadershipcraft.com.

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Hi, my name is Adam Smith and welcome to asmithblog.com. I am the author of the book, The Bravest You. Because of my work as an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and speaker, I have been named a top industry influencer by American Genius. I live with my wife, Jasmine, and three children in Shenandoah, IA.

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