The most important thing business leaders must do today is to be the ‘chief question-asker’ for their organization. – Dev Patnaik

Patnaik is quick to add, “The first thing most leaders need to realize is, they’re really bad at asking questions.”

A questioning culture is critical because it can help ensure that creativity and fresh, adaptive thinking flows throughout the organization.

By asking questions, we can analyze, learn, and move forward in the face of uncertainty. However, the questions must be the right ones; the ones that cut to the heart of complexity or enable us to see an old problem in a fresh way.

Nothing has such power to cause a complete mental turnaround as that of a question. Questions spark curiosity, curiosity creates ideas, and ideas lead to making things better.

Questions are powerful means to employ – read “unleash” – creative potential – potential that would otherwise go untapped and undiscovered.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – – Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John Maxwell

John Maxwell, America’s #1 leadership authority, has mastered the art of asking questions, using them to learn and grow, connect with people, challenge himself, improve his team, and develop better ideas. Questions have literally changed Maxwell’s life. 

In Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, he shows how they can change yours, teaching why questions are so important, what questions you should ask yourself as a leader, and what questions you should be asking your team.

Maxwell also opened the floodgates and invited people from around the world to ask him any leadership question. He answers seventy of them – the best of the best.

No matter whether you are a seasoned leader at the top of your game or a newcomer wanting to take the first steps into leadership, this book will change the way you look at questions and improve your leadership life.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION – Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John Maxwell

Good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance.

The impulse is to keep plowing ahead, doing what we’ve done, and rarely stepping back to question whether we’re on the right path. On the big questions of finding meaning, fulfillment, and happiness, we’re deluged with answers—in the form of off-the-shelf advice, tips, strategies from experts and gurus. It shouldn’t be any wonder if those generic solutions don’t quite fit: To get to our answers, we must formulate and work through the questions ourselves. Yet who has the time or patience for it?

If you want to be successful and reach your leadership potential, you need to embrace asking questions as a lifestyle.

John Maxwell

You Only Get Answers to the Questions You Ask

There is a gigantic difference between the person who has no questions to help him/her process situations and the person who has profound questions available.

Questions Unlock and Open Doors That Otherwise Remain Closed

Successful leaders relentlessly ask questions and have an incurable desire to pick the brains of the people they meet.

Questions Are the Most Effective Means of Connecting With People

Before we communicate we must establish commonality, and the most effective way to connect with others is by asking questions.

Questions Cultivate Humility

If you are unwilling to be wrong, you will be unable to discover what is right.

Questions Help You to Engage Others in Conversation

Asking questions helps people know that you value them, and that, if possible, you want to add value to them.

Questions Allow Us to Build Better Ideas

Any idea gets better when the right people get a chance to add to it and improve it. Good ideas can become great ones when people work together to improve them.

Questions Give Us a Different Perspective

By asking questions and listening carefully to answers, we can discover valuable perspectives other than our own.

Questions Change Mindsets and Get You Out of Ruts

If you want to make discoveries, if you want to disrupt the status quo, if you want to make progress and find new ways of thinking and doing, ask questions.

Remember: good questions inform; great questions transform.

John Maxwell, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions

A NEXT STEP

On the top of four chart tablets, write the four phrases listed below:

• Questions Help You to Engage Others in Conversation
• Questions Allow Us to Build Better Ideas
• Questions Give Us a Different Perspective
• Questions Change Mindsets and Get You Out of Ruts

Review the explantation given for each in the excerpt above, and then spend 15 minutes with each question, listing as many questions under each category as you can.

At the end of the hour brainstorming session, review your lists, and circle the top three in each category.

Intentionally weave these questions in your conversations and discussions over the next two weeks, consciously noting how asking the questions changed the direction of the conversation (both positively and negatively).

At the end of this two-week period, evaluate how you can make questions a regular part of your leadership habits.