Imagine you work with a leader named John. He recently discovered he can increase his tolerance of ambiguity and leadership effectiveness by being more curious.
He read that using the ‘5 Whys’ technique and greater use of ‘What If’ questions are good places to start.
However, once he started, he stopped experimenting with how to use questions to their best effect.
He asked his team members, “why?”, “why?”, “why?”, “why?”, and “why?”, and “what if?” about everything they did, hoping to uncover the root causes of problems and generate new ideas.
Unfortunately, John’s approach backfired.
His team grew tired of speaking with him because it always felt like an interrogation. They started to avoid and lose trust in him, a situation that could have been avoided with a more thoughtful approach to how he asked questions.
John assumed that the ‘5 Whys’ and ‘What If’ were universal tools that could be applied to any situation. He assumed he was highly effective because he asked his team more questions and wasn’t always telling them what to do.
However, he missed the opportunity to ask smarter questions.
As a leader, you want to ask questions that help you and your team and lead to better outcomes and results. How can you do that?
One way to ask better questions is to consider the type of inquiry that suits your situation. Edgar and Peter Schein talk about three types of inquiry in their book Humble Inquiry:
- Diagnostic inquiry: Where you guide the team to what is important and helpful. For example, “What are the main challenges you face in this project?”
- Confrontive inquiry: Where you influence the conversation by adding your own ideas, concepts or advice to your question. For example, “Have you considered using this framework to analyse the data?”
- Process-oriented inquiry: Where you explore what is happening and how it could be improved, including your approach to asking questions. For example, “What is happening here?”
Another way to ask better questions is to use different styles of questions. In the HBR article The Art of Asking Smarter Questions, Arnaud Chevallier, Frédéric Dalsace, and Jean-Louis Barsoux from IMD Business School suggest five styles of questions that can help you explore different aspects of a situation and generate strategic insights:
- What’s known? Here, you can use the 5 Whys technique or successive ‘How?’ questions to explore what you’re trying to achieve and investigate what you already know will help you get there.
- What if? This is where you speculate about the possibilities and scenarios that could happen. Looking at the problem through different lenses or perspectives assists with challenging limiting assumptions.
- Now what? Ask about the actions and next steps that need to be taken to make progress or improve productivity.
- So what? This is where you ask about the implications and consequences of a situation to interpret and make sense of what is happening.
- What’s unsaid? This is where you go below the surface of the iceberg to understand the emotions, feelings, and opinions that may be affecting various actors in the situation.
Choosing the right questions to achieve the best outcome is like being a chess master—you must think several moves ahead if you want to build a more complete picture and engage your team in the process.
However, in a study involving 1,200 executives globally, Chevallier et al discovered that executives tended to favour question styles that had previously brought them success despite needing all five styles to build that complete picture.
To overcome this challenge, you could:
- Use the five question styles as a prompt for developing insightful questions during your next decision-making meeting. Remember to cover them all.
- Share with your team that you’re trying out a different approach so they won’t be caught out when you don’t ask them the questions they would typically expect.
- Mix it up to suit the situation’s complexity and avoid sticking to a linear pattern when using the question styles.
- Encourage others to contribute their own questions when using the question styles so you don’t seem like the quiz master.
As Chevallier et al say, “You’ll be more likely to cover all the critical areas that need to be explored—and you’ll surface information, insights, and options you might otherwise have missed.”
