Almost all possible information and knowledge is only a few clicks or swipes away. So a lack of knowledge is actually not an excuse anymore to not be able to do something.
What could be a challenge, is to find the right information you need. And that's why being able to ask the 'right' questions is more important than ever before!
Read on and find out what 'good' questions are.
My 7 year old son has a tablet that he uses to practice the language and math exercises he gets from school. It's a tablet powered with Android, so Google is inherently available. And with Google also comes the unlimited resource of information.
I can say you that my son absolutely loves it!
"How hot is the sun?",
"How did dinosaurs come on earth?",
"How fast is a cheetah?", are all questions he asks Google. And because you can just talk to Google, you don't even have to wonder about the correct spelling to find the answer. This makes all the information even more accessible.
And still my son is regularly frustrated about the answers he gets.
This has everything to do with the sort of question he asks. You will always get an answer to every question, but to get the answer you're actually looking for, you need to ask the 'right' question.
This is not only the case when searching for something on the internet. It also is very important in every conversation.
If you would really give an answer to the question that is asked, many conversations would completely stuck. This week for example I got an email of somebody asking if he could call me. Well, I'm pretty sure that guy is perfectly capable of picking up the phone and call me. So yes, he can call me. But that's probably not the answer he was looking for. Actually he wanted to know
when was a good moment to have a call, but he never asked that question in that way.
So we interpret the question and take a lot of assumptions into account to answer the question. In many cases this goes well, and sometimes people become frustrated they don't get the answer they were looking for. But if that's the case, did they then really ask the 'right' question?
Now you're probably wondering what the 'right' question is.
Well, the 'right' question is that question that gives you exactly that information that you need to be able to continue.
And that makes that you probably have to think first about how to formulate your question instead of just yelling something out.
Especially in a leadership position this is something very important to be attentive to: which questions do you get? And are those questions the 'right' questions?
One of your readership roles is to let the people around you become stronger in what they do. Having a special focus upon the questions that the people ask you, is one of the easiest things you can do to make your people grow.
I sometimes call it the 'upgraded question'. So that people don't only come with a question to you, but that they actually give you the background on how they came to that specific question.
For example: if someone of your team mates is not able to continue on one of his tasks, because he doesn't know what to do next, then what has he already done to find it out? Which answers/insights did that quest gave him? What is he then still looking for? And how does he think you can help him with that?
That's an 'upgraded question', because then you know that the person not just asks the first thing that came to his mind, but already and actively did something with it.
Another rule you can use for yourself, is to never answer a 'how?' ever again.
The reason for that is pretty simple: asking a 'how?' question stops all active thinking and transfers it all towards the one answering the question.
This makes that a 'how?' question is per definition never an 'upgraded question'!
So if you want to focus on the growth of your team members, then you should be focused on the questions they ask. Because asking 'better' questions will provide them with 'better' information which makes them achieve more!
Now if you want to apply this, and want to become a better leader by focussing more on the growth of your team members, then I suggest you to do 2 things:
- Never answer another 'how?' question ever again.
- Only answer 'upgraded questions'.
And if you get another 'how?' question or you don't get the background around a question, then kindly invite the person to upgrade his/her question first. You will then notice that in many cases the process of upgrading the question will already provide the answer they were searching for. And being able to come up with an answers for themselves, is what is also called 'learning'.
If the process of upgrading the question doesn't provide the answer and the person does come back with an upgraded question, then you have something interesting to talk about! So it's always a gain!
Good luck in focussing on getting better question, and if you want to challenge your own questioning process, or want to be able to steer on the growth of your team members in a more stimulating way, then
feel free to contact me so we can discover the possibilities on working around that.
.jpg)
