Smart Leaders Know How to Ask Dumb Questions
Most leaders think they need to have the answer. Leaders who coach their people know they need to find the best question—the one that clarifies and expands a person’s perspective. We often call these “powerful questions.” And a smart leader also knows how and when to ask the “dumb” question!
Why Dumb Questions = Smart Move
Our brains have so much information to process, that we create shortcuts to save us time and energy. Many of our cognitive biases function in this way—they conserve processing power by making quick (sometimes inaccurate) judgments. Make enough judgments over time, and you’re at risk of using labels based on unexamined data. Worse still, we develop unconscious beliefs that have been fueled by unexamined data, and we forget that we have choices—choices of what data to notice, meanings we can assign to that data, and fresh decisions we can make based on those new meanings.
“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.” R. D. Laing
Laing’s mind-bender of a statement makes the smart leader’s role clear: if you want to change something and your team is getting stuck, notice what’s been going unnoticed.
A simple way to start this process? Define ambiguous terms.
How to Gain Clarity
1. Engage the team in defining keywords surrounding the stuck change, whose definitions they already think everyone agrees on. For example, what does it mean to be “professional,” “on time,” and “heard?”
2. Distinguish between 1) attributes of the term and 2) hidden requests.
When I ask a team what it means to “be heard,” I get attribute responses like “the listener asks questions based on what I say” and “the listener doesn’t interrupt me.” But I also get hidden requests, such as “they incorporate my ideas into their decision” and “they follow through on what I ask of them.”
3. Get buy-in on the attributional aspects of the term to ensure you’ve got a shared definition.
4. Strip out the hidden requests. Discuss them openly and clearly so that a mutual agreement can be made. From that mutual agreement, individuals make commitments, and ONLY THEN can they hold one another accountable.
5. Have patience with your team, both during the process and afterward. Having these terms questioned—terms that are often loaded with history and conviction—can leave people feeling unanchored, perhaps even defensive. And if definitions are changed, they’ll need even more patience as they adjust to the new way forward.
I witness breakthroughs every time I do this, whether with an individual or a team, and I bet you’ll have the same. Sometimes, asking the dumb question is the smartest move to make!