The most powerful question a leader can ask

WDYT – What do you think?

This is the most powerful question a leader can ask his team. Instead of being ready with an answer or solution at any given moment, next time an employee comes to you with a problem, try asking this question and see what happens.

If this is unusual for you, your employee may be a little suspicious about the question. They may think you’re testing them so be genuine, curious and really ask them because you want to know what they think. You may be positively surprised.

One of my favourite stories from my experience as a leadership coach was when I delivered a programme to a group of engineers who worked for one of the big mining companies in South Africa. We came to the section where I teach managers to help their employees think better by asking questions rather than solving problems and giving instructions.

One of the participants (let’s call him James) pushed back quite strongly by saying that he is hired to give answers and not ask questions. I challenged him to try it the following morning. He always went to the mine early to check everything was ok before joining us at the workshop so I suggested that if his team supervisor came to him with a problem, he could ask “what do you think?” before offering his solution.

He chuckled and said he would give it a try.

The next morning, he came into the workshop with this story. He had gone down to the mine earlier that morning, as he always does, and to be sure, an issue had arisen. Instead of doling out instruction on what to do to fix it, he asked the supervisor, “what do you think we should do?”

The supervisor gave it some thought and made a suggestion that James had not thought of. It happened to be a good one. They implemented it and the mine was operational again in half the time it would have taken, had James gone ahead with his own solution for fixing the breakdown. James was blown away by the result.

Of course, things don’t always work that well (and I was relieved that it had) but the point is, James involved his team leader in a thinking process and it worked. The people on the ground often come up with ideas that may be better than yours so all that’s required is to ask them what they think.

Are you willing to try?

Last week I spoke about making your employees, owners in the business.

This week is all about employees as partners. Tune in to Leadership Live Podcast Episode 38 – Conversation with Sean Castrina: How to make decisions in hiring, firing, and partnering to build your business.

Sean’s a serial entrepreneur, who launched more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, each in a different industry. His secret to success is partnering with people who know the industry and letting them run the business, using their expertise.

So how can you partner with your employees to create the best business?
A good place to start is to get into the habit of asking your employees, “what do you think?” a little more often.