When you ask “why,” you are much more likely to uncover information that you don’t already know. Just let that sink in for a moment. It sounds so simple, but it’s so easy to forget.
The kiss of death for any leader is to stop asking questions. When leaders stop asking questions, their followers stop thinking deeply. Here’s how to increase your ROI on your most precious assets by stimulating your thinking and theirs:
Consider for a moment a day of being like the 5-year-old kid who is relentless in his acquisition of knowledge: “Why Daddy? Why Uncle Henry? Why is broccoli good for you? Why is the earth round?” Somewhere along the way, leaders make the dangerous and flawed assumption that appearing intelligent and having all the answers is the way a leader should act.
In his acclaimed book, “The E-Myth Revisited,” Michael Gerber discusses why small businesses have such a dramatic failure rate. He states that the problem with most small business owners is not that they can’t learn what it takes to be successful, but rather that they spend too much of their time defending what they already know.
A far better use of a leader’s time is to develop the compulsive drive to seek information. Become an information sponge. Absorb as much outside and inside intelligence as possible to make informed decisions. The most important activities of an executive are to think, decide, and communicate. It is helpful to have plenty of good information to think with as well as good options when you need to make decisions.
As a coach, I advocate being a regular interviewer of top talent, not so much to hire, but to learn from the experiences of others. For example, if you are expanding the area of customer service, then sound out those leaders and managers who have a track record of customer service excellence. Ask everyone around you to search the Internet and study customer service to gain ideas and best practices. Then hold a brainstorming meeting with your team members to gather the best practices they studied. Ask, “Why would someone do that? How could it help us? Why should we care?”
Not only do you unearth great information in probing with “why,” “what” or “how,” but you will also uncover subtle but very real barriers people hold in their minds about how an idea will not work or what they cannot or will not do. The real meaty issues, those ideas or barriers that make or break greatness are generally hidden below the obvious. Be an information sponge. Ask Why.
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I see the enemy and it is…me?
In 2001, as the world emerged from a horrific terrorist attack on the U.S., many people paused to take stock of their lives. The US Military Commission convened to evaluate how best to lead now that traditional warfare seemed ill-equipped to protect our nation. The commission defined traits or leadership attributes that were critical to lead in the “new reality” of global terrorism, the top two of these being self-awareness and adaptability.
In order to lead in today’s uncertain environment with threats and opportunities around every corner, the best of the best exhibit both self-awareness and adaptability. As a speaker and expert in developing leaders, I share the importance of these top attributes with my clients. Self-awareness and adaptability work well together, requiring one to examine one’s own strengths, weaknesses and typical reactions in order to practice positive adaptation.
The challenge with embodying self-awareness as a leadership trait is that it isn’t something one learns in a classroom. You don’t learn self-awareness from reading a book or looking it up on Google. Self-awareness requires the cut and thrust of real life experiences coupled by the choice to take time out to reflect on your actions from the past and options going forward. Self-awareness requires the courage and honesty to open up and examine your motives, your actions, and the outcome without blaming other people or circumstances for your fate. Denial of culpability is the greatest hurdle in developing self-awareness.
To succeed in developing self-awareness, you must be willing to examine all of the factors that lead to an outcome—grim or mundane as they may be. Consider the tough lesson of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a European obstetrician in the mid-1800s, in his pursuit of understanding. In the maternity ward where Semmelweis practiced, the mortality rate was 1 in 10. Imagine the horror of knowing that one of every 10 babies you delivered would not survive. The statistic was even worse when compared to another ward in the same hospital— attended only by midwives — experienced only a 1 in 50 mortality rate. By today’s standards this is not good, but it was far better than Dr. Semmelweis’s record.
Semmelweis was driven to discover why the mortality rate attended by an educated, learned and renowned doctor, himself, was so much worse than that of the midwives. He examined the data—same hospital, different wards and different population attending the patients. He standardized everything from birthing positions to ventilation and diet of patients to try to close the gap but to no avail.
Then a startling thing happened. Dr. Semmelweis took a four-month leave to visit another hospital. The death rate in his ward fell to the same rate of that of midwives.
You see, Vienna General was a research hospital, meaning that in addition to attending patients, doctors did research using cadavers. This was before there was a working understanding of germs. Semmelweis was transferring particles from the deceased to mothers and infants. The cause of the death rate disparity was Dr. Semmelweis himself. From this realization of his own failure, Dr. Semmelweis would go on to develop and institute a simple practice – washing hands and tools with chlorinated lime solutions – that would ultimately reduce the hospital’s infant mortality rate to below 1 percent and set a major precedent in medical history.
As dramatic as this example is, the critical point is that when things are going wrong, goals are not being met, when relationships are strained or results are lacking, the best and first thing for any leader to do is examine themselves. Ask yourself, “What might I being doing to impact the situation? What factors exist that I can impact? How can I change, adjust, or adapt? Who might I ask for help in examining the situation?”
Too often, leaders look outside themselves first to attribute failures to external situations. This practice of externalizing the problem or challenge is not an example of self-awareness and adaptability. To excel in leading others, you most sometimes look to see if the real culprit in the outcome—the real enemy could be you.
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