Leading with Questions, 3rd Edition

7Using Questions in Leading People

Each question a leader asks can provide a wonderful opportunity for the recipients to become empowered, to do something that they could not do before. Questions have the potential to create confidence, to enhance learning, to develop competence, to engender insights. Questions can move each person in the organization to become a better human being as well as a better contributor to the organization and to the community.

Ron Edmondson, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, with over 40 years of leadership experience as a business owner and as a spiritual leader, shared with us the 12 leadership questions that he has found most useful for empowering people around him:

1. What can we learn from this?
2. Do you understand what I'm asking you to do?
3. How can I help you?
4. What's next?
5. Where should we be placing our best energy?
6. What are we missing or forgetting?
7. How can we do it better next time?
8. What do you think?
9. What changes could we implement to make your work life better?
10. What would you do differently if you had my position?
11. Are you enjoying your work?
12. How can I improve my communication with you?

In this chapter, we discuss how leaders can use questions in managing, retaining, and exciting their staff—how they can use questions to strengthen their relationships with their direct reports, help them grow, and encourage action and innovative thinking. We also review the use of questions in orienting new staff members, setting goals ...