This article was first published February 14, 2020 at Troy Media 

Questions are one of the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal as leaders, professionals, parents, human beings.  One of my favourite personal stories about the power of a question comes from an interview.  My final interview for a job I really wanted was with the CEO of the company.  After peppering me with questions, he asked if I had any for him.  I asked him why he was the CEO.  Twenty years later, I can still remember the ‘whiplash’ that unexpected question elicited.  Afterward I got feedback that it was a very bold question.  I also got the job - either because of, or in spite of - what that encounter said about me.   

Questions, unlike opinions or advice, have a unique ability to stop a thought process or redirect a discussion.  We have all been in meetings where someone is going on and on about what they think.  It is easy to sit back and tune out.  But a question immediately demands our attention.  The better the question, the more likely we are to perk up, and the more likely the conversation will deepen and our exchange become more meaningful.  

What is a good question?  
A ‘good question’ has a number of characteristics.  It is well-considered.  It comes from a place of genuine curiosity.  It is ‘on-topic’.  It is positioned in a way that allows the discussion to move forward.  It requires people to pause and think before answering.  It challenges assumptions.  It opens up new pathways of thinking.    

Coaching is a very popular development strategy for a reason.  It is, at its core, all about asking the good question.  A really good question is fuel for our reflection, awareness and insight.  Most of us like to solve our own problems, and good questions invite us to do that.

When should you use a question?

There are a few key situations where asking a good question or two is more effective than giving advice.  

When someone is on the verge of making a breakthrough.  When someone you are coaching is close to finding a solution or forming a new insight, it is very tempting to step in and point out the obvious.  One of the reasons leaders admit they do more ‘telling’ than ‘coaching’ is because allowing others to work through problems can be painfully slow at times.  One of the best ways to help someone make that final leap of insight is by asking a really good question.  

When someone is stuck in a rut.  Do you know someone who is constantly complaining about the same old thing?  When I see that person heading toward me, I can be guilty of looking for an escape hatch.  When my friend Perry wanted to talk, for the hundredth time, about how under-appreciated he felt at his company, I decided to change tactics.  Perry was stuck in a rut - unhappy but not doing anything about it.  Instead of spending 30 minutes listening, nodding and showing empathy, I asked a question instead:  “What do you need to do in order to leave this job and move to a place where you will be appreciated?”   My question took Perry off-guard because it wasn’t my usual ‘if you hate it so much why don’t you leave?’ question.  It was a ‘how’ question, and ‘how’ questions engage our problem solving brains. Instead of complaining, Perry spent the next 30 minutes talking about strategies for leaving, as well as sharing his fears and feelings of inadequacy.  Asking a really good question can be the impetus for helping someone get ‘unstuck’.    

When someone is coasting.  When you see someone who is not living up to their potential, a question is far more effective in inspiring action than a judgment.  For example, telling your daughter she could have had an A in math if she had worked a little harder is unlikely to be met with a positive response.  Asking her ‘how important is it to you to get an A in math this year?’ is more likely to help her reflect on and tap into her own motivation.  

Knowing when and how to ask a good question is an invaluable skill.  It will make you a better leader, a better coach, a better parent, a better friend.   And asking really good questions is also the best way I know to come across as really smart without having to know all the answers.

Taylor is one of those confident, outgoing guys who stands out in a crowd.  He looks like a leader, talks like a leader, and collects fans the way charismatic types do.  He has built an impressive career.  When I asked him what has been key to his success, he spoke about the importance of never staying too long in any one job or organization and being aggressive and aspirational in pursuing the next opportunity.  The funny thing about Taylor is, if you stop and objectively evaluate his success beyond the positions he’s held, he comes up short.  While he’s been successful, the projects he’s managed, the teams he’s built, the businesses he’s led have not been particularly remarkable or successful.  In fact, he is someone who consistently disappoints.  In his case, moving from one company and opportunity to another helped him evade questions about his real effectiveness.  Because Taylor looks like a leader and talks like a leader, people have - erroneously - assumed he is a leader.  This is a common, and potentially disastrous, human decision-making error: confusing leadership presence with leadership effectiveness.

It is this very human error that tends to get us, as citizens, into trouble in the political realm.  We are naturally attracted to those candidates who possess leader-like qualities and we get behind them.  It isn’t until after the fact we discover that, sometimes, looking like a leader and sounding like a leader does not translate into an ability to lead.  

It is this same human error that gets CEOs and boards into trouble when they make judgments and decisions about personnel.  When we use ‘executive presence’ as a proxy for effectiveness, we run the risk of hiring or promoting someone who proves unable to translate their leadership presence into results.

Strategies to Avoid Getting Duped by Leaders Who are ‘Big Hat, No Cattle’
There are things you can do to avoid hiring people who possess more leadership presence, confidence and ambition than they do real ability.

Be aware of the natural tendency to be attracted to and distracted by leadership presence.  Knowledge is power.  If you know we tend to correlate leadership emergence with effectiveness you can guard against it.  When you hear yourself thinking or saying ‘she really stands out as a leader,’ follow up with ‘I wonder how effective she really is.’

Seek out and supplement intuition with hard data.  Sometimes it is easier to make judgments and get to the heart of someone’s effectiveness when there isn’t so much veneer.  When there is a lot of veneer, this is the time to be more diligent in supporting your gut reaction with facts.  Expand the reference pool and dig deeper.  I recently did a 360- feedback process for someone who got glowing reviews from everyone I spoke with.  It wasn’t until I dug in and asked about results that I heard things like "yeah, I really like her and would work with her again in a second, but to be honest, while she did okay she really wasn’t as successful as we were expecting".  Things to watch out for include: a track record of promotions generated by moving between rather than within an organization and frequent job changes before results can be adequately assessed.

Psychometrics can be your friend.  In my leadership practice I use both in-depth interviews as well as psychometrics (you know, those pesky online leadership assessments) to understand leadership effectiveness.  They can provide important supplemental information about leadership style and personality variables that are missed by interviewers.  Leader-like people perform exceptionally well in interviews.  Good psychometric tools can help to tease out leadership presence from leadership effectiveness so you don’t get duped.

Know when to cut your losses  
We all make mistakes, sometimes in spite of our diligence.  It can be hard to face up to bad decisions - it is embarrassing to admit you have mis-judged someone.  Discovering your new CEO isn’t very effective in leading the people or the business is a hard pill to swallow.  But leadership effectiveness requires the building of managerial ‘muscle’ and ‘scar tissue’ over time and experience.  Can you afford to try and transform this leader’s emergence into effectiveness at this stage in their career?  If the answer is ‘no’, best to move on.  If the answer is ‘yes’, you will need to figure out how you are going to do that.  Step one is convincing that leader she is not as effective as she believes herself to be.  It isn’t impossible, but it is probably not going to be very easy.  After all, look at her track record.

What to Do if This is You
What if you are the person who possesses tremendous leadership presence but hasn’t been able to translate it into real and sustained leadership success?  Sometimes our self-confidence and belief that we ought to be in charge can get in the way of the vulnerability that is required to actually learn how to be effective.  The good news is, you are starting from a position of strength - people already see you as a leader.  Here are some strategies to get you on your way.

Admit you may not be as great as you think you are.  As they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step.  My favourite people to work with are those who see themselves as always coming up short and in constant need of development to improve as leaders.  Not surprisingly, these are usually the people who are most effective and need my help the least.  When you say you want to improve, do you really mean that or is it a superficial acknowledgement?  Where is the evidence to back up your commitment to change?  Are you prepared to do the work?

Seek a deeper level of self-awareness.  Not all of us are blessed with penetrating insight into who we are and what makes us tick.  Strategies for supplementing your own insight include 360-reviews and those pesky psychometrics.  These tools are designed to tell you, in very objective terms, about you.

Get professional help.  I know that you don’t just want to be a leader, you want to be a good leader.  If being an effective leader were so easy, you would have figured it out by now.  It isn’t easy.  So admit you need help transforming yourself into the leader you want to be and seek out the help and support of someone who can really help you make that happen.  This isn’t a 30-day program.  This is a lifelong pursuit.

Sources
This article was inspired by a webinar entitled The Impact of Narcissism on Leadership courtesy of Hogan Assessments (www.hoganassessments.com), the Alberta provincial election, and at least one ‘big hat, no cattle’ leader I’ve bumped into recently.

A version of this article was first published in my monthly Troy Media column and can be viewed at  http://www.troymedia.com/2015/03/30/tips-to-becoming-a-strategic-thinker/

Last week I started working with a leader who suddenly finds herself on the executive team.  A corporate restructuring caused her to skip a level and now she is sitting around the table asking, ‘am I strategic enough to do this job?’  Her question is not unique.  Twenty years of working with leaders on their development has taught me there are 3 leadership success factors executives worry about most: public speaking, financial acumen and strategic thinking.  The typical solution for the leader who wants to be more strategic is to attend an executive education program called something like "Strategic Planning for Executives".  What usually happens is they take the program, have a wonderful time, develop some really good peer connections, and then complain the course was aboutplanning not strategic thinking.

What is strategic thinking?

Strategic thinkers demonstrate the following characteristics:

1. They see patterns.  Strategic thinkers have a way of looking at information and seeing relationships.  Instead of identifying 5 problems that need solutions, they see how 5 problems have a common thread and conceive a solution that addresses all of them at once.   
2. They see the future.  Strategic thinkers see how events are likely to play out.  They have a ‘sixth sense’ that gives them an upper hand in using data to predict the future and they plan accordingly. 
3. They communicate at a higher level.  Strategic thinkers speak the way they think - they are future-oriented and thematic in their communication.  They are good at connecting actions and people to higher-order goals.
4. They are efficient and disciplined in assigning resources.  Strategic thinkers streamline how they assign and align resources.  They are less distracted by the ‘urgent’  and maintain a steadfast focus on the ‘important’.

Can strategic thinking be learned?

First, the bad news.  Everyone’s brain is wired differently.  Some people are profoundly creative.  Others have an intuitive sense around people.  Your brain is your brain.  Best to know what it does well, and where the wires don’t connect.

Now, the good news.  If you understand how your brain works, and you know what you want it to do, you can apply it in new ways.  

How to be more strategic

Not every strategist will be a leader, and not every leader will be a strategist.  Being a strategic leader is a combination of strategic thinking and strategic action.  

Tactics for developing strategic thinking include:

1. Be curious.  Strategic thinkers take in a lot of information from many different sources to help them spot patterns.  The best way to stimulate thinking is to step outside your normal flow of information.  
   
2. Look for themes.  As you travel around your environment, keep an eye out for things that are related.  Stop and take note every time you read or hear a particular topic or point of view.  I have a couple of blogs and podcasts I track and when the same idea pops up 4-5 times in completely different places, I like to ask the questions, ‘what is going on here?  Does this mean something?’
3. Set aside time for reflection.  How can you possibly think strategically if you don’t allow yourself time and space to think?  The 21st century is all about doing.  Shame.  Because the best ideas and insights come from thinking.  I highly recommend a daily walk, alone. 

Tactics for developing strategic actions include:

1. Develop and use frameworks.  Strategic leaders are able to link activities and initiatives to higher-order goals and objectives.  There shouldn’t be anything on your ‘to do’ list that isn’t tied to a key objective.  A framework allows your team to prioritize effort so they are working together with maximum impact.  There is nothing worse, or less strategic, than a leader who is constantly downloading random questions and requests for information.  The message it sends to the team is, ‘this is interesting but I don’t know what is important.
   
2. Lead through goals.  Strategic leaders manage goals, not tasks.  They are good at establishing deliverables and then leave others to determine the mechanics of how things will get done.  They focus on what, now how.  
3. Delegate decision-making authority.  Strategic leaders are rarely accused of micro-managing.  Being too hands-off, maybe.  Because they provide their teams with clear strategic objectives aligned around performance outcomes and have a decision-making framework, they rarely need to intercept the decisions being made by those around them.

Everyone wants to be strategic.  While you might not be the most strategic thinker by nature, strategic action can be nurtured.

Your future success as a leader depends upon your ability to translate feedback and awareness into a tangible development plan.  Unfortunately, you probably have no idea where to start.  After 20 years in the business of helping to transform leaders and organizations I am convinced, more than ever, that the ‘black box’ in bridging the gap between leadership potential and reality is development.  There are endless solutions for acquiring feedback that point in the direction of change.  There are, likewise, endless solutions for measuring and rewarding performance.  What is most often missing is what happens in between - a fundamental understanding around how to move from leadership aspiration to reality.  In essence, how to change behaviour.  If you are a leader interested in how you can transform yourself, read on.

Step 1: Gain Clarity Around You Who Are and Who You Aspire to Be

Why should anyone be led by you?  We don’t spend enough time asking ourselves who we want to be when we grow up and why we should be leaders.  How can you tackle your development if you really don’t know who you are and what you stand for?  I have had the privilege of working for leaders who ‘get’ this and the less-than-inspiring experience of working for those who do not.  Quite honestly, there is nothing more frustrating or disillusioning than working for someone who really does not have an interest in developing their identity as a leader.  

Defining Who You Are as a Leader

I will admit I can be a tedious leadership coach.  When I am working with leaders in the context of personal transformation, before we even discuss where they should focus in terms of their development, I ask them to answer these questions: 

1. What is your leadership philosophy?  How do you think about and define leadership excellence?  What do you value in a leader?  What do you stand for?  What kind of leader do you aspire to be?
2. What is your leadership personality? (who are you?).  What are your key character traits?  What are your values and beliefs? What motivates you?
3. What is your leadership presence? (who do others see and experience?)  What is your behaviour?  How would others describe you?
4. What is your leadership potential?  What is the alignment between your leadership philosophy, who you are as a leader, and how people experience you? (these are your core strengths and form the foundation of your leadership practice; this is what you build from).  Where is the mis-alignment between your intent and how your behaviour is interpreted? (these are your gaps, shortcomings and blind spots; these you assess and determine if you manage, mitigate or develop).

Step 2: Setting Development Targets and Priorities

The goal of leadership development is to align intent with behaviour in order to achieve higher-order objectives in the context in which you find yourself.  So often, leadership development springs from a mis-match between what a leader is striving to do and what is coming across to key stakeholders.  The extent to which you are aware of and can objectively assess your development opportunities determines your ability to develop strategically and intentionally.    

Questions leaders should ask before determining development priorities and next steps

Not everything that you get feedback on is worthy of development.  I don’t particularly care what your 360 feedback, leadership assessment report or leadership coach have to say about how you need to change.  Instead, I suggest you ask yourself a series of questions to get at the heart of where you should focus your development:

1. What relevant strengths do I possess that I can leverage more effectively in this situation?
2. What strengths do I possess that I can build upon to be more effective in this situation?
3. What strengths have I relied on in the past that are less relevant to success in this situation that I need to monitor and manage in order to avoid over-reliance?
4. What gaps do I have that limit success in this situation but which I have the potential to close?
5. What gaps do I have that will be difficult for me to close in any situation and which I need to manage or mitigate?
6. What are blind spots that can derail me in this situation if I don’t become more actively aware of and monitor?

Making Change Stick

Where the rubber hits the road around personal development is translating your desired future behaviour into tangible action steps that will result in real change.  I have seen a lot of development plans; I have seen a lot less actual development.  If you are serious about actually transforming who you are as a leader, the very best resource I have found for changing behaviour is James Clear’s Transform Your Habits.  My summary of how to translate development intent into sustainable behaviour change is:

1. Goals need to be visceral and tangible.  You have to be able to see and feel the future leader you aspire to be.
2. You have to really want it. 
3. You have to be able to translate the goal (future behaviour) into a daily habit.  
4. Focus your activity on the daily practice of a new habit.  Behaviour changes one day at a time until old habits are transformed into new habits. 
5. Actively track your process and progress.  That means every day, stop to reflect on what you intend to do and make a note of how it went.
6. Celebrate success on a daily basis.  And if you were not successful today, remember that tomorrow is a new day that begins with a clean slate.

Change is hard.  This is the humble summation of my experience working with hundreds of leaders.  But it is less hard when you are clear on the case for change.  And less hard when you are clear on what really needs to change.  And less hard when you are clear on how you are going to instigate that change.  You are in charge.  What you want to do is completely up to you.


Sources
Transform Your Habits (2nd Ed.).  James Clear.  www. jamesclear.com

Because it is January, chances are you are frantically trying to schedule year-end performance reviews.  The dreaded performance review - quite possibly the most detested HR program ever invented.  It doesn’t matter what process, form or technology is in place to accomplish this task, it is always bad.  But what if I were to tell you that you can put an end to the madness?  It is probably not realistic to eliminate the task altogether (someone from HR will hunt you down eventually), but you can put an end to the dreaded part.  I know I did.

Step 1: Focus on performance planning, not performance review

How would you feel, as a fan, if your favourite hockey team showed up on the ice without a game plan.  Instead of carefully crafted and well-rehearsed strategies and plays to get the puck in the net, the coach decided just to ‘play it by ear’.  That is what a lot of leaders do with their teams.  Instead of investing time and energy in crafting well-considered performance contracts that align tightly with business objectives, a lot of leaders leave their direct reports to ‘wing it’ on a day-to-day basis.  I have seen large, complex organizations with serious strategic objectives fail to engage employees in anything resembling a robust performance planning process.  Each member of your team should have clearly defined deliverables that directly align with your deliverables, which should directly support your boss’ deliverables, and so on.  This process takes effort, but at the end of it each of your team members will have a concrete business plan they will use to prioritize their time and performance.  They will know what is expected of them and align their activities accordingly.

Step 2: Hold weekly review meetings based on the performance contract 

When I took on managing a senior team my coach gave me a piece of advice: hold weekly 30 minute update meetings with everyone.  The prospect of that seemed overwhelming to me at the time, but I decided to trust her and give it a shot.  While it wasn’t always easy, and sometimes the weekly meeting drifted to a bi-weekly meeting, I can tell you it worked.  For 30 minutes each week, team members provided a short and snappy update against their performance plan.  Anything not directly related to the plan was dealt with in a separate meeting.  What did this accomplish?  Focus.  Momentum.  Timely, relevant two-way feedback.  No surprises.  Results.  My team got the important stuff done.  This is what performance management (and people leadership) is all about.  More importantly, as a team we knew we were contributing in a significant way to helping the organization achieve results and we felt good about our accomplishments.

Step 3: Watch performance review become a non-event

When formal mid-year or year-end performance reviews were due, it was a non-event for us.  Everyone knew where they stood because we tracked this on a regular basis.  And because I knew my team were achieving their goals, I knew I was delivering on my commitments to my boss.  So instead of spending time arguing about and negotiating performance ratings, we spent our time talking about development and career goals.  And that is how you engage employees.  Not by handing them a report card like they are still in grade-school, but by helping them paint a picture of their future.

I have many shortcomings as a leader, but performance management is something I was pretty good at.  But only because I was intentional in building it into my management routine and relentless in executing against it.  So make this the last year you say you hate performance reviews.  It’s January, after all.  Time to get on that performance planning process.


Sources

This month's blog was inspired by a conversation on building organizational alignment with DC, a newly appointed CEO.