Archives For Productivity

How To Ask Great Questions for Great Learning & Leadership | Part 2

17/04/2013 — Leave a comment

In part one of How To Ask Great Questions for Great Learning and Great Leadership, we explored two things to that help in asking questions. Read the post here.

Great questions are the basis for great learning. Consider them as tools. Tools are only as effective as how well they are maintained and used. The more skill full the user the more he can get out of them.

Let’s continue with how to ask great questions:

Answer

One of the greatest mistakes most make when the ask questions is to start answering the question, themselves, before the person they are asking does. The problem with this is that it channels the one being asked on how to answer the question.

Assuming the person being asked has better knowledge about something you’re most likely to miss out on an opportunity of great learning. This is because answering before you give opportunity to the interview is a little short of putting an answer in their mouth.

what does it mean How To Ask Great Questions for Great Learning & Leadership | Part 2

an inquiring mind is prerequisite for great and successful leadership || image by JD Hancock | cc

Ask your question, shut up and give the one you’re asking space to respond.

Don’t be that jerk who poses a question to a panel and answers it himself. To take it further, he gives reasons why he answers the way he does, leaving the room with awkward silence and the panel wondering what they should do.

The goal of asking questions should be to learn not show off how smart you think you are.

Implications

 

Another way to ask great questions, especially after listening to someone, is to first consider the implications of what they have said. When you hit a wall on in some of the possible implications that is the question pose out audibly.

What you want to do in asking great questions is ask questions you either cannot answer easily or not at all.

What’s the point of asking a question that you already have the answer to?! This sounds rather redundant but you’d be shocked at the number of people I’ve encountered at workshops I’ve facilitated that ask questions they already know the answer to.

It is a different story, of course, if it is not obvious to you that you know the answer. The issue is just asking questions to fill the room with some noise.

What are some of the most useless questions you’ve heard asked?

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How To Ask Great Questions for Great Learning & Leadership | Part 1

15/04/2013 — 4 Comments

Questions are a great medium of learning. Great students love and understand the importance of questions. Leaders who do not have appreciation for questions, especially directed at them miss out on opportunities to communicate values and vision to their team.

The mark of great students and leaders is not only being able to answer questions well, but also being able to ask great questions.

How to ask great questions:

Think

Boring interviews, classes or mentoring is often the result of boring questions. In order to take your learning or research to empowering levels never ask “off-the-top-of-your-head” questions. These questions are a little short of an insult.

Off-the-top-of-your-head questions normally get off-the-top-of-the-head answers. The answers are often obvious.

To make the most of time with your mentor, speaker or your team ask well thought out questions.

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questions, like any tools must be used effectively for greater results

|| image by Clarkston SCAMP | cc

Equipping questions are ones that even when you think about them, cannot easily formulate an answer for them.  Challenging questions create great opportunities for new information that can grow you tremendously.

If you know the agenda of a meeting you will be attending, think about the questions you are going to ask before the meeting. Consider how empowering they could be.

Prepare for attending a conference. Think about what it is about and what you want to learn from it. Remind yourself before each session. This will help you listen and engage with a critical ear, helping you to ask non-typical questions.

Great thinkers ask great questions, that cause great learning.

The Edge

 

Be a little more daring in asking questions. Interviews and meetings can easily be a boring and unhelpful because everyone wants to ask panels or other people in the meetings that keep people as comfortable as possible.

Don’t just ask questions to rile people or for controversy’s sake, but don’t be afraid to ask daring questions. Never be afraid to challenge speakers on their talks or subjects. Don’t be rude but ask the questions everyone has on their minds but is too scared to ask.

Fear of asking what is really on your mind will stand in the way of growth.

Any great facilitator, speaker, teacher or leader is hungry for deep engaging questions, and these questions do not come up when you’re too afraid to ask.

Ask anyway even if you have to ask with sweaty palms and a quivering voice. Remember the goal is to learn and help those you’re with to learn and grow as well.

Never allow difference of opinion or perspective get in the way of a great question and learning. Fear stops you from engaging those who think differently. Let your learning and cause be more important the being comfortable. Be on the edge if you have to…

Any question that doesn’t help you grow is not worth asking. Rock the boat if it is means greater growth.

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Why Leaders Should Spend Time In The Trenches With Technical Teams

12/04/2013 — 2 Comments

Leaders pool resources and people to make vision happen. They need to have a bird’s-eye view of their enterprise to make sure that the big picture does not morph into something that is not meant to be.

In bringing everything together and making it happen, leaders easily get frustrated when teams do not deliver at a pace consistent with their expectations. This is often the result of leaders not fully understanding or appreciating the processes that their teams go through from meetings to implementation.

Every leader must spend time in the trenches with their teams. This is truer for their technical and creative teams.

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leaders cannot lead effectively without spending time in the trenches

|| image by U.S. Army Alaska | cc

Here’s why every leader needs to spend time in the trenches with their technical teams:

Insight

 

Spending time with your teams allows you to get a better understanding of what is behind the results of each of your teams.

You cannot appreciate what you do not understand.

Being behind the scenes can help you appreciate your teams’ hustle. Teams that feel unappreciated are often led by leaders who do not take time to understand what their work is like.

Language

 

Being in the trenches can help leaders pick up language relevant to each team or discipline. This will be helpful for innovation and productivity, as it will equip you to speak straight into the heart of execution when you meet or communicate with them.

Disconnect between what teams deliver and what leaders require is often a result of them speaking different languages. Understanding some of the technical languages enables leader to understand things with reduced interjections.

When a leader can speak the language of his technical team it fosters unity and endears respect of the team.

Real

 

When leaders spend time in the trenches, it allows their teams to see that they are real people. People relate to others when they find common things with other people.

They only way this can happen is when time is spent with others. Your team needs to know you’re human. They need to know you face challenges just like they do.

Spending time with your teams gives you more credibility. Does your team know how you take your coffee? Do you know how your team members take their coffee?

Innovation

 

Innovation is sparked when people from across disciplines and different perspectives chase the same goal. Proximity of the people from different perspectives and disciplines is the basis of innovation. If people with different perspectives and from different disciplines are afar off, so will innovation.

When leaders step into the trenches they do so with fresh eyes. Thus you are able to identify new opportunities and ways for greater efficiency.

Big Brother

 

Anything that goes wrong under your watch is your failure. Leaders are as responsible for success as much as failure. Don’t micromanage but don’t be so removed that you have no idea what is happening with teams in your enterprise. That is weak leadership.

Give responsibility and do check in with teams.

When you make a habit of checking in with your teams in their environment and not just meetings, people will be more relaxed, natural and open.

They will share more than they would in general meetings.

If you technical, what do you appreciate about your leader spending time in your world? If you’re a leader what stops you from spending time with your techies?

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Sweat The Small Stuff

05/04/2013 — Leave a comment

Small hinges swing big doors ~ Mike Murdoch

People care about the small things. Not all big problems have big causes or need big solutions. We miss out a lot in terms of delivery when we only think the solution has to be big.

In all your planning and thinking through how you serve the people your organization serves how often do you ask the question, “What is the small stuff we may be missing”.

Strike a balance between thinking big and small. Remember, it is the small foxes that spoil the vine…

For people and organizations that have served you, what are some of the small things that made a big experience for you?

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Leaders and Blue-sky Days

02/04/2013 — 1 Comment

There is no leadership without vision. Vision is what gives purpose to all effort and activities. A leader without vision is a captain who takes people on a road trip without a destination and map to it.

Clear vision inspires action. Not keeping vision in clear sight creates a toxic team and organizational environment. Keeping vision in front is necessary for keeping the main thing the main thing.

Leaders are dreamers. They are dreamers for the organization and subsequent change the organizations’ activities bring to the world at large.

Leaders have to bridge dreams for their organizations and the world with the action that makes them happen. They cannot and must not stay in dream mode but also move into action mode.

They must also be careful not to get stuck in action mode but remember that they constantly need to dream.

In order to dream, they need to create space for what Bill Hybels calls “Blue-sky days”. They are days where they just dream. Where they just imagine and dream for their organization and the value their organization adds to the lives of those they serve.

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every leader must make sure they never let the pragmatic leader in them cloud their blue-sky days

 

Blue-sky days are moments of dreaming without any limitations. Imagining possibilities without getting hung up on how to make them happen.

In dreaming leaders must fight the temptation to cross over to their action mode. When you switch to action mode, that is, already try to figure out what it would take to make some dreams happen while you drew, you cripple your capacity for dreaming.

Already trying to figure out how you’re going to make something happen while you’re dreaming smothers possibility of what could be.

Do not kill your dreams before they’ve even had a chance to live by trying to figure out everything in the dreaming stage. Consider the dreaming stage as the womb of dreams. See it as the cradle of vision.

Plans and goals and how you are going to make vision happen is only secondary. Starting a new enterprise? Do you need to bring about new life into your organization?

Call your team together and have blue-sky day. Imagine the possibilities. Dream about what you could make happen. Do not entertain the pragmatic leader in you.

Give space for your dreams to come out. When dreams for your organization and those you are save are powerful enough, you will find a way to make it happen.

Make provision for blue-sky days. Let them be, so that you better serve your organization and its stakeholders. Blue-sky days are also incubators of innovation. Let the blue skies be.

In Ideas, Leadership, Passion, Productivity, Vision , , , , , , ,
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