"The Right Questions"

I have come to understand and appreciate the power of asking questions rather than providing answers. Too often leaders subscribe to a belief that telling is leading. Don’t get me wrong – having answers is important; asking the right questions is more important.

“Leadership is not about knowing all the answers. It’s about knowing what great questions to ask, and carefully listening to those answers (Michael Marquardt, 2005).

More often or not, leaders underestimate the need for others to wrestle with difficult, challenging questions. The rhetorical exercise of asking and answering ones’ own question does not allow for the necessary intellectual tension, conflict associated with learning. Not to mention that perspectives, contrarian viewpoints, alternative solutions and the like are necessary to raise thinking and problem solving commensurate with the level of challenges faced in complex, fluid, and dynamic organizations.

Yet, what if we have been asking the wrong questions?

What if our questions are based on a narrow viewing point or perspective or are limited by faulty assumptions, erroneous facts or etc.?

The wrong questions lead to wrong or incomplete answers that cannot and will not produce different thinking – different behaviors – different results.

How do we know if the questions we are asking are the right questions?

Insight into asking questions comes from Michael Marquardt’s (2005) book titled Leading by Questions. He says that “Great questions – questions that inspire, motivate, and empower the organization” are the right questions. Right questions require “developing and sustaining a culture where asking questions is safe and desired”.

He goes on to add, “Astute leaders use questions to encourage full participation in teamwork, to spur innovation and outside the box thinking, to empower others, to build relationships with others, to solve problems, and more. The most successful leaders lead with questions, and they use questions more frequently. Successful and effective leaders create the conditions and environment to ask and be asked questions. Questions wake people up. They prompt new ideas. They show people new places, new ways of doing things. They help us admit that we don’t know all the answers.”

At the Ebenezer Community Forum two weeks ago I was asked why there is such a wide disparity between our African-American students and Caucasian students in academic performance?

Rather than providing my thoughts, I asked, “why do you (the audience) think there is wide disparity?”

First and foremost – yes, there is a wide disparity in performance! That being said, the question can actually “inspire, motivate, and empower” not only the school system but also the community.

Without retreating and offering the oft cited and proven false explanation or excuse of poverty, value proposition, family structure, unemployment, and etc., we focused on expectations – the expectations of community.

Does our community expect each learner to learn to high standards? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

Does our community expect each learner to demonstrate, apply, and perform what they have learned at a mastery level? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

Does our community expect each learner to conduct himself or herself in a manner that does not interfere with learning, safety or well-being of others? If yes, how does community communicate and reinforce high expectations for each learner let alone each teacher, each classroom and each school?

These questions are at the center of the disparity in academic performance.

We have not expected each learner to learn to high standards!

We have not expected each learner to demonstrate learning to a high standard!

We have not expected each learner to behave in such a way not to interfere with the safety, learning, or well-being of others.

Our questions, these questions require participation, full participation of our community. These questions require the building and sustaining of relationships within and throughout our community.

Lastly, these questions must prompt and provoke new thinking as well as new ways of doing things. The answers and solutions are not far from our reach. In fact, they are readily available and within our control. The answer is and will remain – expectations.

It starts and ends with us - our community!