The phrase “ask better questions” as a leadership principle was inspired by a conversation I had with one of my FBI National Academy students last year. We were talking after class when she mentioned this as a goal. It hit me about the broad applicability of learning to ask better questions and I decided to incorporate this into my leadership vision at that moment.
As a career investigator, I’ve asked a lot of questions. They’ve helped me get information when I’ve needed to get information. But the strategy of seeking facts doesn’t always help you to better understand someone.
In grad school, I learned about power of inquiry in helping to better understand someone else. I also learned about the balance between inquiry and advocacy and why that was important. Still, this isn’t absolute, and we can slip into advocacy veiled as inquiry if we’re not honest with our heart and careful with our phrasing.
I began to learn about the value of great questions in my coaching training. Specifically, I learned that the best questions are often not to help us understand someone else. Rather, they are about helping someone better understand themself.
Being intentional with my questions has helped me to be a better leader, a better parent, a better instructor, and a better coach. It helped me learn that most of us have our answers, so asking better questions gives someone that space for their own internal inquiry.
We should listen more than we talk. And when we talk, we should seek to understand, not always to convince. As we seek to understand, we should sometimes try to hold up a mirror for the other person to better understand themself.
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