Skip to main content


HOW TO AVOID DANGEROUS QUESTIONS AND BECOME A REAL LEADER

Look for leaders with forward-facing curiosity.
“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.”  Peter Drucker

The right questions:

  1. Confront wrong thinking. Search for root causes, not just symptoms.
  2. Explore commitments. On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you?
  3. Begin with what or how.
  4. Move from the big picture to the small.

A truly dangerous question:

Why aren’t we achieving our goals?
Smart people become dimwits when leaders ask why-questions. They don’t know the answer. If they did, they’d be doing it. It’s not likely they have enough information to answer such a broad ambiguous question.
People’s minds shift toward blame when managers ask why something isn’t working.
Use ‘why questions’ when exploring purpose or broken processes. Other than that, begin questions with what and how.

Powerful questions:

  1. What is the goal?
  2. Why does this goal matter?
  3. How would you know if you reached your goal?
  4. If someone saw you working to achieve this goal, what would they see you doing? (Get to behaviors or nothing will happen.)
A question at the leadership table:
What are the people around this table doing to ensure that we reach this goal?
The answer to the question isn’t, “We’re sitting in this room having a meeting.” Real work happens before and after meetings, not in them.
Leaders who avoid responsibility blame others for their own incompetence.
Modeling behaviors that achieve goals is the difference between leadership and blabbership. Anyone can proclaim, “Our goal is a 10% increase in sales.” What must “I” do is the first step toward real leadership.
Focus on behaviors, not ambiguous numbers.
What are some useful leadership questions?

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BITCOIN BTC

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a payment system [14] :3 invented by an unidentified programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto . [15] Bitcoin was introduced on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, [16] and released as open-source software in 2009. [17] There have been various claims and speculation concerning the identity of Nakamoto, none of which are confirmed. [15] The system is peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. [14] :4 These transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the blockchain , [18] which uses bitcoin as its unit of account . Since the system works without a central repository or single administrator, the U.S. Treasury categorizes bitcoin as a decentralized virtual currency . [11] Bitcoin is often called the first cryptocurrency, [19] [20] [21] although prior systems existed [note 4] and it is more correctly descr...
Post a Comment
Read more

HOW TO STUMBLE FORWARD WITH BOLDNESS AND FIND SUCCESS

An infant watches others walk and learns that walking is possible. But success calls you to turn possibility into reality by stumbling forward. Others may have stepped out already, but it’s still the unknown for everyone who hasn’t done it before. It feels like letting go and stumbling forward. Stumbling forward: Some live life according to plan. In some ways I admire them. But I wonder how you can even imagine the possibilities until you’ve climbed the hill in front of you and spied new terrain? Writing Leadership Freak began with stumbling. I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I’d never written anything beyond papers in school. Now I serve leaders all over the world. Stumbling forward changed my life. An opportunity to stumble forward: A college student approached me with an offer to start a Leadership Freak podcast. I’m stumbling forward with him. He doesn’t know it, but he’s suggesting things I’ve rejected in the past. I don’t write about current events, for example. He thinks ...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE DEADLY ENEMY OF VITALITY

The most dangerous enemies of organizational vitality live inside your organization. They laugh when you stumble and hand you rocks when you’re down.
Post a Comment
Read more