Fifteen Questions for Leaders

When you are given the title of leader, you may think that you must be a source of wisdom. That is, everyone expects you to be the one who answers the questions, not the one who asks them.

But that's far from the truth. Great leaders are humbled by their ignorance, consult trusted advisors, and come to a conclusion quickly. Just asking a few people doesn't get enough information. Successful leaders learn to ask everyone and everyone questions and make that their top priority. At times, they also have to answer difficult questions for which they themselves do not know the answer, or which cannot be answered without access to confidential information, or whose answers would be unpleasant.

It takes courage to ask questions. Because asking questions and acknowledging they don't know the answer is not the behavior one would expect from a leader. Most people use words like "tough", "resourceful", "decisive", "bold" when they paint the image of a leader, and even references to words like "curious" and "questionable" tend to put In the end, mindsets are hard to change. But at this point, leaders must change. If members of the leadership are required to have the correct answer to any question, only a few are qualified to be leaders. If members of the leadership are required to ask challenging questions, everyone is expected to take the lead.

Here are some of the main questions every leader should ask themselves, their employees, and their clients. Use the answers you get as a motivational starting point for action. Passionately develop a plan to help your employees work better and your company to better serve customers.

First ask yourself

1. In the next year, what kind of development will the company have? Leaders must talk about the future anytime, anywhere. What does your leadership team talk about in meetings? Maybe you should talk about this together. Whether you are the head of the team or one of them, ask this question. If you're a mid-level leader, bring other mid-level leaders together to talk about the topic.

Most of the time, people take it for granted that these things should be the concern of the "real" leaders of the company. In fact, true leaders exist at all levels within an organization, and their vision should feed into the ongoing discussions about the future.

2. What is the future of our industry? Most employees don't have the opportunity to attend trade association meetings, or have no access and time to read industry reports, but they need information from both sources. This is when you should make a difference. As a leader, your job is to take the big picture. How can the company adapt to the development trend of the entire industry? How does it compare to competitors? What changes are affecting the way you and your competitors operate? You need this information in order to make informed decisions and design a path forward. People at all levels of the company also need this information to understand the context in which management decisions are made, to help clients understand changes in company policies and operations, and to think about their future. Then they will be full of hope.

3. How can I know what my subordinates are doing at work? This question is based on many people's concerns that leaders are confused about what their subordinates do on a day-to-day basis. While the decisions they make affect their subordinates' day-to-day lives, subordinates feel they have no idea what their jobs are about.

What should leaders do? The following provides you with a solution, but also a challenge. Take a close look at the company's org chart, identify 12 areas where you haven't had much opportunity to engage with employees so far, and make a plan to engage with one of those areas each month for the next 12 months. For example, spend a day with an installer, answer the phone with a customer service rep, try to make a few sales calls, clean the bathroom with the housekeeper, and check your bills with an accountant. See how company policies and charters work in practice, impacting workflow, quality of life, and productivity. Experience the day-to-day work of an employee and ask a few more questions to determine what you experienced that day was representative.

times asked employees

4. How do we make money? Most employees are never told how the company works. This fact gave birth to the idea of transparent management. Three elements embody this philosophy: every employee can see and learn to read the company's financial statements; they recognize that one of their job tasks is to move the numbers on the financial statements in the right direction; The company lives and dies.

Even if your company is not transparently managed, ask the question "what do we make of it". Ask your team members this question, assess their responses, and develop a plan to help the team see the big picture. If you don't know the answer to the question yourself, it can cause panic. But don't use this as an excuse not to ask people, but as a reason to ask someone who knows the answer.

5. How can you improve your productivity? Your team members may know what will help them improve their productivity, but they may not know how to make that change, and it's the leader's job to help them come up with solutions and remove obstacles that prevent them from being implemented.

6. What is the most important thing you know about customers? This customer question guides, reminds, and encourages your employees to stay aware of customer needs. The answers obtained will provide unlimited sources of information for the company's future actions. If the employee cannot answer this question, don't panic. This shows that you and your leadership team still have some work to do. Some employees need a little help understanding how their work connects to the work of other employees in the company and ultimately serves customers.

7. What can we offer our customers? This question is designed for collecting ideas -- ideas from many sources. Your job is to ask this question to as many people as possible. When it comes to ideas, the worst that can happen to you is getting very few ideas. This is why the main principle of brainstorming is to gather popularity, not to force quality. Unfortunately, many leaders forget this. If you want to hear ideas that make your clients happy, you have to collect a lot of ideas and consider them one by one, even the ones that are expensive or ridiculous.

Ask the employee again

8. What obstacles have you encountered at work? The answer to this question may be a department or an employee. Remember, it may take some time for the respondent to decide whether it is safe to tell you the truth. Describing an outdated policy or explaining an easily simplified procedure is a fairly safe answer. But to comment on a bottleneck department or an employee who hinders teamwork, the decision-making process is quite different.

When you ask this question, you will have to factor in time and place. Giving the other person time to think after asking the question will help you get a thoughtful and meaningful answer. Once you have an answer, the best response is to fully accept the information, clear up any ambiguities, and assure the respondent that you will take these valuable comments from him very seriously.

9. What recent management decision did you not understand? If a decision or a change measure has been announced to the outside world, but internal employees still know about it, no matter how reasonable or practical it is, the response of employees will be poor and the company will suffer as a result. Many major decisions are passed to employees without a well-thought-out internal communication plan, and most day-to-day decisions are passed to employees without explanation.

As leaders begin to take responsibility for explaining decisions seriously, they also take on the vital role of educators. In helping employees understand decisions, leaders teach them how to make their own decisions.

10. How does it feel to work within the company's internal team? The intent of this question is to understand how complete the company team experience is, and if employees mention lack of support, lack of resources, underappreciation, or endless time-wasting meetings, then you should pay attention. Here, the team played no role. You don't expect to put a bunch of smart people in one room, call them a team and they'll be a team. Teams need to be developed, and that is the job of leaders. Based on the answers you get, review how you formed, nurtured, and rolled out the team. Maybe you need to consult the existing team structure chart, or develop some project retrospective plan to check the progress of the team's work.

11. What have you learned this past week? It's fascinating to see how employees learn. The beauty of a do-it-yourself learning environment is that everyone will find their own way of learning. You can provide support there. Does the company have a library? Is there a writing board or flipchart that everyone can use? Did you know that employees muttering to themselves and standing all the time in meetings can be signs that they are learning? It looks like there's still a lot to learn.

Also ask the client

12. Why do you do business with us? Asking customers this question can help you get immediate feedback and insight into the future. Some answers may displease you, but all provide opportunities for improvement and growth for you and the company. You'll get reasons to celebrate, reasons to change, reasons to retest established policies and procedures.

13. Why do you do business with our competitors? This question is the opposite of the previous one. Asking this question is to understand how you compare to your competitors in the minds of your customers.

You may be afraid to ask this question because of your concerns. For example: What if you find that your competitors are doing a great job? What if customers say they are turning to your competitors? In fact, you can think of it this way: what if the customer has those ideas and you don't know what to do? Without the information gained through this question, you have no chance for improvement, should you be more concerned about this?

14. When and what actions did we make that made it difficult for you and me to do business? Has the client never encountered a policy or process difficulty in doing business with you? When was the last time you checked for this type of issue? Every business requires some system, policy and procedural support. Employees must be clear about their job responsibilities, have job-related support technologies, and understand their authority. Leaders must make coherent decisions, anticipate future opportunities, and keep an eye on the business budget. So where can the voice of the customer be heard?

The only way to know how a company's systems and procedures are is to ask customers. In the process of asking, you will be greatly inspired. These answers may point you in the direction of changing your company's policies.

15. In what area do you want our company to improve? You need to ask the customer what he thinks during the ten-minute call transfer process, what he thinks when he goes to great lengths to get your company to revise the invoice, ask him what he thinks when he is subjected to cumbersome procedures What do you think when you are angry. It's important that you get your customers to say what they really think. What matters more is what you do with the answers you get. You need to listen and question further, while also explaining to the client why they cannot or will not take their advice.

Originally adapted from 78 Important Questions Every Leader Should Ask and Answer by Chris Clarke-Epstein with permission. The author registered the copyright in 2002, and the book was published by AMACOM, a branch of the American International Management Association. Translated by Liu Yanqun.

The English version of this book is available for purchase from McGraw-Hill Education (Asia) in Singapore. Chris Clarke-Epstein is a consultant, seminar leader, public speaker, and author of several books including The Instant Trainer.