Your Neglected Superpower? Questions.

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” — Chinese proverb

You have a superpower you are not using nearly enough.

Questions are that superpower.

Why? Because Questions deepen comprehension not just for us but also for others.

Questions to Tell Answers? “Management teams aren’t good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers.” — Clayton M. Christensen

Too often I see people ask questions for which they have “the answer.” That’s about looking smart, about “me”.

In companies we’ve been thought that providing answers demonstrates competence. Answers get rewarded. A promotion, a raise, recognition. Questions are sometimes viewed as an annoyance, a sign of weakness, of not having the answer. This is answer-driven leadership.

As a senior leader, you have gotten to the top based on the “answers” you have provided. These answers may be business track record, experience, functional expertise, process management, people skills, others.

However, the world changes and even the “laws of physics” break down under certain conditions. And in business, these conditions are typically anything to do with customers.

The problem with answers is they suggest finality, shutting down the possibility of an alternative reality. How can one learn whether our answer is still true?

Only by posing the question and beginning with a clear mind.

“I Know Where the Fish Are.”

I often retell a story from a very weather owner of a fishing company. He spoke about why so many of his captain friends went broke.

Invariably after landing a large haul of fish, these captains would bet bigger. Why? They know where the fish were. The next success just feed that view. Until, they did not find the fish. They put that one down to back luck and went back again and again until the money ran out.

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” — Bill Gates

A right answer to the wrong question is not too dissimilar to luck. When we don’t explore the “why” behind the outcome, we make the assumption that doing the same thing will produce again. We might not realize it was correlation, rather than causation.

Learn Better Questions. “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” — Antony Jay

We can learn to ask better questions. That learning however starts recognizing that we have biases and assumptions that cloud our view. Naming them is the start.

From these the purpose of the questions become clearer. To deepen our own comprehension and understanding.

In business, a great starting point is asking question about the problem. What problem are we trying to solve? Is it a customer problem or our problem? These are very different problems. Increasing sales is our problem, not a customer problem. Customers liking our solutions is our problem, not a customer problem.

From a deeply emphatic understanding the problem, the solutions become clearer. They are typically different from solutions we started with, but it what the customer wants.

Playing Tennis Left-handed.

Let’s assume you are really good at tennis. You’ve gotten to a high level because of all endless hours of practice, games, coaching. It’s been hard work.

Now think about playing tennis with your opposite hand. If right-handed, playing left-handed. Think you can do it at any decent level?

Learning a new approach takes practice. The mind is a muscle. Getting really good at questions takes lots of practice. Reprogramming our default to asking questions is like learning to play tennis left-handed. There is no other way to build the question muscle than to do it.

Just do it!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.