Asking questions doesn’t make it leadership

Most leaders have been told they should ask more questions.

So they do.

They ask people what they think, what they would do, what support they need, what they have learned, what they might try next. They ask questions because they know they are not supposed to simply give answers, solve problems and tell people what to do.

Great first step. And yet - despite the right intention the execution is often next to useless.

When the intent comes from thinking it’s the right thing to do, compared to understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it – you get very different outcomes.

This is where many leaders unwittingly fall over, guided by mediocre leadership training that does what most poor leadership training does - assumes people are rational. They are not ... and that's why it feels good but doesn't work. Leaders are taught to use questions as a general leadership technique rather than a precise tool for movement. They learn to ask vague, airy, coaching-style questions that float around the conversation without changing it. The person answers, the leader nods, everyone stays polite, yet little actually shifts.

That is pretend leadership.

A real leadership question has a job.

It is placed deliberately - asked because the leader knows where the person is in the conversation and what needs to happen next for them to move. 

It might be used to slow the moment down. Or to check in that what has been said was actually heard. It may be used to bring a reaction from supressed to expressed so it can be understood rather than managed. A question can be strategically used to move past defensiveness and into curiousity. Or to discover what really sits behind behaviour or results.

This intentionality is a very different use of questions and they change the conversation immediately.

When difficult information needs to be shared with someone, most leaders still focus on the message. What do I need to say? How do I say it clearly? How do I make sure I am direct but not too harsh? Of course, these considerations are important but they are not enough, because saying it clearly has a bizarrely distant relationship with being understood.

Leaders underestimate this reality.

A person can hear the words and still not have received the information, because they have their own lens with which they see life and because most people switch very quickly to defensiveness when they hear something they’d prefer not to. Their emotions and internal monologue turns the commentary into something that’s actually not what is said – but becomes real for them. Unfortunately, few leaders take it any further – they assume what’s said is what’s heard when this happens more rarely than you’d expect. 

If the leader leaves the message at that, often swiftly moving to the solution, the person is often left behind.

This is why questions are needed and why questions need sequence.

Before someone can explore what sits behind a pattern, they need to understand what has been said. Before they can take responsibility, they need enough room to notice their own reaction. Before they can become curious, they often need help moving through the emotion that arrived the moment the truth was spoken.

To guide someone through to active listening and enquiry requires intelligent questioning.

A reaction is nothing to fight – it is information. It tells you where they are in relation to what’s been shared. It tells you whether they are ready to work with it, if they can own it, or if you’re going to have to work a bit harder to get them to understand what’s been shared.

A skilled leader understands this is required to create real change. 

They ask into it.

“What are you hearing in what I’ve just said?”

“How does that land for you?”

“What is your reaction to hearing this?”

“Is this something you have seen in yourself, or is this new information?”

“What feels hard to take in?”

“What do you think might be sitting underneath this pattern?”

These are not soft questions. They are not fluffy. They are not there to be nice.

They are there to create movement.

The point of a question is not to sound collaborative. A question should help the person travel from where they are to where they need to be: from hearing to receiving, from reaction to reflection, from defensiveness to curiosity, from being told about themselves to beginning to understand themselves.

This is where questions become influence.

Truth isn’t easy to hear. It’s surprisingly easy to avoid. It requires a deliberate intervention where someone can develop a relationship with the information to come to understand and transcend it.

That is what most leaders are missing.

They know they shouldn’t simply give answers, but they haven’t learned how to use questions with the precision to create real development. Their questions remain vague. Or avoidant. Overly gentle. Or they ask the person what they think before the person has understood what has been seen. They ask what they will do differently before the person has explored why the pattern exists in the first place.

Then they wonder why nothing changes.

This is why Unmanaged leadership develops the ability of the leader to ask great questions in a strategic sequence. The right question, asked at the wrong point, can fail. The right question, asked at the right point, can create transformation.

How intelligent are your questions? Are they designed to meet your people where they are at – or get the outcome you want? Where are you rushing someone towards action before they have received the information? Where are you avoiding the emotional response instead of using it as information? And what would change if your questions were designed to help people hear, understand and explore what is really happening?