Do Your Leaders Possess This Superpower?

If you are reading Remarkable Results for the first time, please subscribe here ? to receive each weekly issue.? If you like what you read, please share it with others and invite them to subscribe.

Superheroes in the world of cartoons, graphic novels, and movies are seemingly normal people who have superpowers that typically help them make the world a better place. What if we could equip our leaders with a superpower that would help them make their teams more effective work better? Let’s stay in the realm of possibility – If you could give your leaders one realistic and not completely fictional superpower, what would it be??

Here's my answer: The power of asking more and better questions. I want you to consider questions as a superpower, and here is why.

Why Questions?

Think about the best leaders you have personally experienced. If you make a list of five such people, I’m betting at least four of them were good at asking questions. Questions of you, of the team, about the situation, and more. Great leaders know they don’t have all the answers. They want and need the input, perspectives, and advice of their teams. And more than just thinking of questions as a tool to gain information, they are a powerful (and perhaps the best) way to engage the team in anything.

We all intuitively know that the questioning skills of leaders are important. But until we think of questions as a superpower, we aren’t likely to view the building of this skill as paramount in the development of our leaders. Once you adopt that perspective, the logical question is, how do we build that superpower?

Building the Superpower

Organizationally, there are several steps we can take to ensure questioning becomes a priority skill for our leaders. Here are some of the most important ones.

• Declare Questions as a Superpower. Prioritize questioning as a leadership skill and help change people’s mental view of leading to align with this approach. Many people see leadership as answering questions more than asking them. So, you must declare the goal and help people see why they will be more effective with a questioning mindset.
• Set the Expectation. If people don’t see skilled questioning as an expectation, they will be far less likely to change their behavior in that direction. Make this an explicit part of your leadership competencies and job descriptions, but then you must do more. Declaring the priority is one thing. Making it real in terms of people’s daily behavior is something else. If you want to develop questioning as a superpower, you need to make it a daily expectation. This is necessary to change both the mindset and habitset of your leaders.
• Provide Learning Opportunities. We have all asked questions our whole lives. And there is plenty to learn to become more skilled at the kinds of questions to ask, when to ask, and how to ask them – especially in the leadership role. That is why you may need to add some learning opportunities to help people build the skillset to match the mindset shift you are trying to create. This could include a wide variety of learning approaches, including 360° assessments and coaching.
• Recognize Progress. Like any behavior change, make sure you are recognizing the progress of leaders as they are developing this new superpower. And seriously, once you see questioning in such a powerful light, you will want to celebrate, support, and encourage these skills as much as possible.
• Build Role Models. If leaders look upward and don’t see senior leaders applying the superpower, they won’t either. Sure, you might grow a few leaders with the superpower using the other suggestions on this list. But you won’t get widespread use of questioning skills for your leaders without this additional component.

As your leaders come to view questioning as a superpower, they will have better information, make better decisions, engage their team more fully, empower their team more, improve retention, and so much more. This change will also help them see their role more clearly, reduce their stress, and improve their confidence.

Superpower, indeed.

………….

Looking to learn some best practices in developing and nurturing an effective team culture?? Join us for our unique approach to virtual peer learning on May 1 to help you build your team culture.? Learn more and register here .

…………

It’s your turn.? Share your thoughts to this question in the comments below: Which of the strategies listed would be most valuable for the leaders in your organization – and why?

A version of this article first appeared on our blog .

……

Have a great week – The resources below will extend this article and support you in getting Remarkable Results.

You are Remarkable!

Kevin ??

Are You Asking Enough Questions?

It's not just about the quality of your questions. Quantity should be a consideration as well. Read more...

The Power of Asking “What Else?”

In this video short , I explain why this question may be the key to unlocking all sorts of important answers.