Just Ask Leadership - Why Great Managers Ask the Right Questions
Gary, what experiences inspired you to write the book?
In growing our business from 2 to 2,200 employees, Rick Diamond and I were continually reinventing ourselves. It is said that every time you double in size you need to replace every system and process that you use. We grew 50% compounded annually for our first 12 years. You can imagine the amount of learning we had to do as owners/leaders of the business. In an effort to keep up, I attended Covey Leadership Institute, Disney Leadership Institute, Harvard Business School, and the Aspen Institute (as a Crown Fellow). I had some incredible instructors, who asked terrific questions that motivated and challenged students, but I was never taught question-asking as a leadership skill. Growing up with learning differences (relating to poor graphomotor skills, low active working memory, and inattention), I relied on questions to succeed in school and build social connections. As a business owner, I used questions as much, if not more. I suspected there was a connection between question-asking and leadership, so I interviewed more than 100 successful leaders. They confirmed that I was onto something and inspired me to write a book. Just Ask Leadership is a compilation of these leaders’ question-asking wisdom and an effort to inform readers about a skill that is practiced by the best leaders in this country and rarely, if ever, taught.
From your research and experience why do find that many leaders are "tell" rather than "ask" oriented in their communications?
As kids, we have an insatiable curiosity. Every parent knows this with the “why, why, why” coming from their toddlers. Over time, parents grow tired of explaining and their response becomes “because I said so!” Telling of this sort is also favored in schools. Our school system was originally designed for the industrial age with the intention of preparing students for factory jobs. The goal was not to teach about the art of the question, but to learn the right answers. Whatever the teacher said was what students were supposed to copy down and internalize. When they entered the workforce, these teenagers followed instructions and were rewarded for doing it well. Even today, we’re rewarded far more for providing good answers than asking good questions. So it’s not surprising that many leaders are oriented toward telling rather than asking. We also have a neurological inclination toward telling. Our brains are wired for two main functions: storing information based on invariant patterns and predicting what will come next. These two functions lead the brain to want to believe it has the answer. When you are finishing someone’s sentence, you are using both of these key functions. First, you are associating what the other person is saying with some past stored memory, and then you predict an answer based on where you think the person is going with their thoughts. If you are extraverted, you might finish the sentence out loud; if you’re introverted, you’re more likely to finish it in your head. Either way, you want to believe you know what the person is going to say—rather than revise your beliefs and memory-storage system. Everyone wants to provide answers, including leaders. To do otherwise requires considerable self-discipline. According to a survey I conducted, only about 30% of leaders say that they ask more than tell. And yet 97% of these same leaders prefer to be asked rather than told what to do. I think leaders need to think deeply about these results.
What is the most interesting feedback you have received from readers and leaders after completion of the book?
Of the 100 or so leaders I interviewed for the book, only two had thought deeply about the subject of questioning beforehand. Some of the leaders I interviewed called to thank me later for making them consciously competent about a technique they have been doing for years unconsciously. It requires a different mindset to succeed as a leader (asking questions in order to motivate others) vs. the one needed to rise up the ranks of an organization as an answer-provider. If leaders realize this early enough in their careers, they can keep from burning out—which is what commonly happens to leaders who try to provide all the answers for their organizations (a near impossibility with the pace of business and information today).
I think that you make a good point that some leaders do ASK questions, however their misguided intent is manipulation as opposed to gaining insight and buy-in. What advice do you give in this situation?
Just Ask Leadership should not be confused with the Socratic Method. According to Plato, Socrates did not know the answers to the questions he asked, but that’s hard to believe. I have had many teachers use the Socratic Method and I know if the class diverted them from their learning target, we would quickly learn that there was a right and a wrong answer. Often for leaders, there are no right answers only different choices. Smart educated employees don’t want to be manipulated into a cat-and-mouse game of finding your answer. If you have the answer and aren’t willing to explore other possibilities, TELL your employees. To ask under these circumstances is to play games, and your employees will resent you for it.
Why do some leaders roll their eyes when building a great CULTURE is suggested as a means to performance improvement and building a great company?
Mike Harper, who built ConAgra from $500 million to $20 Billion in 17 years, said to me that the greatest tool in the CEO’s tool bag is the culture. The reason less successful leaders roll their eyes is that they don’t understand that some “soft skills” are essential to creating lasting, hard results. By asking more and better questions, leaders will create a culture that is engaged, aligned, and accountable. And there will be far less eye rolling in that culture.
In addition to the advice you provided here, what is the greatest failure of leadership in businesses?
Leaders don’t recognize that leadership is not about being trusted; it is about trusting those that work for you. It is about having the courage to be vulnerable enough not to know the answers, but to move others to their answers. Leaders often position themselves as teachers and, in the process, forget to engage in new learning. We all have blind spots and, as leaders, they’re not often corrected, unless we seek counsel. My partner and I hired coaches from the onset, and they made more than we did for the first three years. We continued with coaches even after we enjoyed considerable success. Leaders who assume they’ve learned all they need to know and get complacent often get surprised (if not undone) by blind spots. They can’t expect friends and colleagues to give them the objective feedback they need.
Are you working on another book or do you have plans to do so in the near future?
For the moment, I have put the idea of another book on hold and continue to promote the book and concept Just Ask!
