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ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
Knowing all the answers isn’t as easy as it used to be and maybe we should stop trying. Learning to ask the right questions is the way to help people move forwards and get better at sorting their own problems.
How often have you ever really needed your boss to tell you what to do? You might need him to give you some context and some background information, but in terms of what you actually do you really don’t want him sitting on your shoulder telling you your every move. People don’t want you to tell them what to do as much as they used to. Increasingly you get things to happen by asking good questions.
In the past, in a command and control world, it was assumed that you got things to happen by telling people what to do. The higher up the chain you moved, the more people you got to tell what to do. You were expected to know more than those below you, and to be the one with the most experience and knowledge. This allowed you to make the best decisions about what was to be done, by whom, and why. This was a scary place to be at the best of times and it is becoming increasingly unrealistic. The world is complicated and moving ever faster. People’s expectations are changing. We need to shift our assumptions about how to manage people and move away from notions of being in charge and towards working out collectively what makes us more effective.
This shift in assumptions is even more obvious online. The range of people able to share their knowledge can ...
