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Leaders of Remote Teams Must Learn to Protect the Overachievers

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Your team has probably been working remotely for a year or more now, and even as the country moves into fast-forward about “opening up”, it’s likely that remote work will continue in some form for the foreseeable future.

What may have been quick emergency actions like having the basic tools and defining remote processes is now moving toward a new normal.

To make it through the current crisis and return to that new normal, you and your team will need to be resilient. The good news is that leaders can help create the conditions that make this possible.

As Bryan Miles, CEO and cofounder of BELAY, a leading U.S.-based, virtual solutions company says:

“Productivity comes from people completing their tasks in a timely, professional, adult manner, not from daily attendance in a sea of cubicles and offices.”

How will you lead your team through both this changing tide and new reality?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

The “work from home” phenomenon is thoroughly explored in this illuminating book from bestselling 37signals founders Fried and Hansson, who point to the surging trend of employees working from home (and anywhere else) and explain the challenges and unexpected benefits. Most important, they show why – with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo – more businesses will want to promote this new model of getting things done.

The Industrial Revolution’s “under one roof” model of conducting work is steadily declining owing to technology that is rapidly creating virtual workspaces and allowing workers to provide their vital contribution without physically clustering together. Today, the new paradigm is “move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace.” According to Reuters, one in five global workers telecommute frequently and nearly 10 percent work from home every day. Moms in particular will welcome this trend. A full 60% wish they had a flexible work option. But companies see advantages too in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages. In Remote, authors Fried and Hansson will convince readers that letting all or part of work teams function remotely is a great idea–and they’re going to show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.


A SIMPLE SOLUTION 

A common belief among managers contemplating remote work teams is the fear that their employees would slack off when out of the office and away from their watchful eyes.

The reality is that remote employees are more likely to overwork than underwork.

The employee who has passion and dedication to their work often has difficulty balancing their work and demands of their private lives when their work is being done in the spaces normally dedicated to private lives.

Leaders of remote teams must be aware of the signs of overwork, and intentionally work to prevent it.

Be on the lookout for overwork, not underwork.

If you’ve read about remote-work failures in the press, you might thing that the major risk in setting our people free is that they’ll turn into lazy, unproductive slackers. In reality, it’s overwork, not underwork, that’s the real enemy in a successful remote working environment.

Working at home and living there means there’s less delineation between the two parts of your life. You’ll have all your files and all your equipment right at hand, so if you come up with an idea at 9pm, you can keep plowing through, even if you already put in more than adequate hours from 7am to 3pm.

The fact is, it’s easy to turn work into your predominate hobby.

If work is all-consuming, the worker is far more likely to burn out. This is true even if the person loves what he does. Perhaps especially if he loves what he does, since it won’t seem like a problem until it’s too late.

It’s everyone’s job to be on the lookout for coworkers who are overworking themselves, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the managers to set the tone.

In the same way that you don’t want a gang of slackers, you also don’t want a band of supermen. The best workers over the long term are people who put in sustainable hours. Not too much, not too little – just right.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Remote: Office Not Required

A NEXT STEP

As the leader of remote teams, how you practice working remotely will often set the pattern and practice of your team.

Using the following ideas from Work Together Anywhere, evaluate your own remote practices, and then determine how you will share the expectations with your team.

Motivation and Self-Discipline

  • Have a set routine
  • Dress like you’re going to work
  • Work in a space designated for work
  • Set a schedule and stick to it

Productivity

  • Experiment with time- and task-management methodologies and apps
  • Minimize multitasking; instead, focus on one thing at a time
  • Pace yourself to regulate your energy, maximizing your stamina and mental acuity
  • Make sure your workspace aids rather than hinders your productivity

Self-Care

  • Balance stints of productive, focused work with sufficient breaks that include movement.
  • Don’t forget to allow yourself the perks of remote working, like taking a break in your living room, or eating lunch on your patio
  • Combat the risk of loneliness by actively seeking social interaction both in person and online

Communication and Collaboration

  • Adopt a virtual-team mindset by trusting others to deliver the results they committed to while doing the same
  • Practice positive communication by being overtly friendly and assuming positive intent
  • Be reliable, consistent, and transparent: make sure your teammates know what you’re working on and how to reach you, within agreed upon guidelines

As Leaders of Remote Teams, We Need to Prioritize Outcomes, Others, and Ourselves

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Your team has probably been working remotely for most of the last year now, and even as discussions about “opening up” begin to become more prevalent, it’s likely that remote work will continue in some form for the foreseeable future.

That’s the question Google is tacking with a new set of policies recently rolled out by the company’s CEO. They center around just three words:

Flexibility and Choice.

What may have been quick emergency actions like having the basic tools and defining remote processes is now moving toward a new normal.

To make it through the current crisis and return to that new normal, you and your team will need to be resilient. The good news is that leaders can help create the conditions that make this possible.

As Bryan Miles, CEO and cofounder of BELAY, a leading U.S.-based, virtual solutions company says:

“Productivity comes from people completing their tasks in a timely, professional, adult manner, not from daily attendance in a sea of cubicles and offices.”

How will you lead your team through both this changing tide and likely new normal?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Long-Distance Leader by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel

As more organizations adopt a remote workforce, the challenges of leading at a distance become more urgent than ever. The cofounders of the Remote Leadership Institute, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, show leaders how to guide their teams by recalling the foundational principles of leadership.

The authors’ “Three-O” Model refocuses leaders to think about outcomes, others, and ourselves—elements of leadership that remain unchanged, whether employees are down the hall or halfway around the world. By pairing it with the Remote Leadership Model, which emphasizes using technology as a tool and not a distraction, leaders are now able to navigate the terrain of managing teams wherever they are.

Filled with exercises that ensure projects stay on track, keep productivity and morale high, and build lasting relationships, this book is the go-to guide for leading, no matter where people work.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Leadership has never been a simple task. Factor in the many complications of leading your team remotely, and it would seem that leadership difficulties have magnified exponentially.

According to author Kevin Eikenberry, “It may have always been lonely at the top, but now we’re literally, physically, by ourselves much of the time.”

Being a Long-Distance Leader may feel radically different from how you’ve led in the past, but the core part is still the same: you are a leader, first. 

Accept the fact that leading remotely requires you to lead differently.

What’s needed is a change in mindset from time-based working to results-based working, which calls for evaluating output rather than hours.

Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel

There are three areas of focus all leaders must recognize and use to reach their maximum success.  

  • Outcomes—you lead people with the purpose of reaching a desired outcome. 
  • Others—you lead with and through other people to reach those outcomes.
  • Ourselves—you can’t leave yourself out of this model. While leadership is about outcomes and other people, none of that happens without you whether you like it or not.

At the highest level, organizations exist to reach outcomes of one sort or another. As a Long-Distance Leader, this focus on outcomes is, if possible, even more important and can definitely be harder. There are three reasons for this difficulty:  

  • Isolation. When people are working remotely, they are likely alone more of the time, often leading to silos of the smallest nature – people acting as if they are a team of one, and forgetting how their outcomes are part of the larger whole.
  • Lack of environmental cues. Working from a home office or remote location, people do not receive the very clear clues and cues that reinforce the organizational focus.
  • (Potentially) less repetition of messages. Unless leaders consistently, and in a variety of ways, communicate and reiterate the goals and outcomes for the team, people may get lost in their own bubble.

Long-Distance Leaders must also focus on others. Here are seven reasons why: 

  1. You can’t do it alone anyway. Leadership is about the outcomes, but those must be reached through others.
  2. You win when they win. True and lasting victory comes from helping others win, too.
  3. You build trust when you focus on others. Focusing on others and showing them you trust them first will build trust with others.
  4. You build relationships when you focus on others. When you’re interested in, listen to and care about others, you build relationships.
  5. You are more influential when you focus on others. Since we can’t control people, only influence them, our focus on others will help be a positive influence.
  6. Team members are more engaged when you focus on them. People want to work with and for people who they know believe and care about them.
  7. You succeed at everything on “the list” when you focus on others. Whatever your to-do “list” contains, by focusing on others first, achieving that list will be more successful.

The great paradox of leadership is that it isn’t about us at all—as we have just said, fundamentally leadership is about outcomes and other people.

Finally, who you are, what you believe, and how you behave plays a huge role in how effectively you will do the other things. Here are three reasons why Long-Distance Leaders must focus on themselves:

  • Assumptions. You have assumptions about what it means to work remotely. We could give you the statistics that show teleworkers are more productive, but if you don’t believe that, or assume people are multitasking on non-work items while they are at work, you will operate based on that belief rather than the facts.
  • Intention is important, but not enough. Throughout this book we talk about being intentional with nearly everything. Here, though, the challenge lies in the gap between what you want and mean to do, and what you actually do.
  • Making a decision. As a long-distance leader, you will face many choices and have lots of ideas. But none of them will work until you decide to act.

Kevin Eikenberry and Gary Turmel, The Long-Distance Leader

A NEXT STEP 

Use the following questions by author Kevin Eikenberry to honestly evaluate how you are practicing the three “O” principles listed above: Outcomes, Others, and Ourselves.

  • What do you feel are the most important outcomes expected of you as a leader?  
  • How has working remotely impacted those outcomes for you and your people?  
  • What do you feel are the most important ways to focus on others in your organization?  
  • How has working remotely impacted that focus?  
  • How do you see yourself in your role as a leader?  
  • How has leading remotely impacted your beliefs and behaviors?

How to Unwrap the Power of a Beautiful Question

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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 – A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger

In this groundbreaking book, journalist and innovation expert Warren Berger shows that one of the most powerful forces for igniting change in business and in our daily lives is a simple, under-appreciated tool–one that has been available to us since childhood. Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, “beautifully”–can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask “Why?”

Berger’s surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning “falls off a cliff” as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn’t encouraged–and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.

And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They’ve mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking–and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them–by starting with a “beautiful question.”


A SIMPLE SOLUTION 

With the constant change we face today, we may be forced to spend less time on autopilot, more time in questioning mode—attempting to adapt, looking to re-create careers, redefining old ideas about living, working, and retiring, reexamining priorities, seeking new ways to be creative, or to solve various problems in our own lives or the lives of others.

When we want to shake things up and instigate change, it’s necessary to break free of familiar thought patterns and easy assumptions.

We need to learn to ask beautiful questions.

A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

The nonprofit sector, like much of industry, is inclined to keep doing what it has done—hence, well-meaning people are often trying to solve a problem by answering the wrong question.

People tend to approach and work through problems – processing from becoming aware of and understanding the problem, to thinking of possible solutions, to trying to enact those solutions. Each stage of the problem solving process has distinct challenges and issues—requiring a different mind-set, along with different types of questions. Expertise is helpful at certain points, not so helpful at others; wide-open, unfettered divergent thinking is critical at one stage, discipline and focus is called for at another. By thinking of questioning and problem solving in a more structured way, we can remind ourselves to shift approaches, change tools, and adjust our questions according to which stage we’re entering.

The Why stage has to do with seeing and understanding. The “seeing” part of that might seem easy – just open your eyes and look around, right? Not really. To ask powerful Why questions, we must:   

Step back.

Notice what others miss.

Challenge assumptions (including our own). 

Gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry. 

Question the questions we’re asking. 

Take ownership of a particular question.

The What If stage is the blue-sky moment of questioning, when anything is possible. Those possibilities may not survive the more practical How Stage; but t’s critical to innovation that there be a time for wild, improbable ideas to surface and to inspire. If the word why has a penetrative power, enabling the questioner to get past assumptions and dig deep into problems, the words what if have a more expansive effect – allowing us to think without limits or constraints, firing the imagination.

The How stage of questions is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the point at which things come together and then, more often than not, fall apart, repeatedly. Reality intrudes and nothing goes quite as planned. to say it’s the hard part of questioning is not to suggest it’s easy to challenge assumptions by asking Why, or to envision new possibilities by asking What If. Those require difficult backward steps and leaps of imagination. But How tends to be more of a slow and difficult march, marked by failures that are alley to be beneficial – but don’t necessarily seem that way at the time.

Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

A NEXT STEP

According to author Warren Berger, when it comes to questioning, companies are like people: They start out doing it, then gradually do it less and less. A hierarchy forms, a methodology is established, and rules are set; after that, what is there to question?

In A More Beautiful Question, Berger lists a series of questions from consultant Keith Yamashita that leaders should consider. To arrive at a powerful sense of purpose, Yamashita says, organizations today need “a fundamental orientation that is outward looking”—so they can understand what people out there in the world desire and need, and what’s standing in the way. At the same time, leaders also must look inward, to clarify their core values and larger ambitions.

At a future team meeting, ask the following questions, and record all answers.

  • How is our mission best expressed in everyday life?
  • Which of our values are most relevant in this season? Which of our values is most aspirational?
  • What ministry or program is having the most impact? Which is having the least? Why?
  • What area of spiritual growth is most underdeveloped among our body?
  • What are we most excited about in the next year?
  • What is most important in the next 90 days?
  • What do we want to celebrate five years from now?
  • How will the results of this exercise change the direction of your organization?

To Help Solve Problems, Use Critical Thinking Skills

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What’s at stake if teams do a poor job of solving problems? From a long list of potential answers, four stand out:

  • Lost time: Poor team problem solving simply burns more time. It may be more time in a meeting itself, because there were no collaboration guidelines. Perhaps it’s lost time outside of the meeting in hallway conversations, because ideas weren’t fully explored or vetted.
  • Dissipated energy: Poor team problem solving leaves questions unanswered and half-baked solutions in the atmosphere. We don’t know exactly where we stand or what we’ve decided. The thought of revisiting an unfinished conversation itself is an unwelcome burden.
  • Mediocre ideas: Poor team problem solving fortifies our weakest thinking. Innovation is something we read about but never experience. We cut-and-paste the ideas of others, because we don’t know how to generate our own. We traffic in good ideas and miss great ones.
  • Competing visions: Poor team problem solving invites an unhealthy drift toward independence. No one has the conscious thought that they have a competing vision. But in reality, there are differences to each person’s picture of their future. It’s impossible for this divergence not to happen if there is no dialogue.

So, how do you start to create the dynamic of collaborative problem solving?  

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills by Michael Kallet

Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills is the comprehensive guide to training your brain to do more for you. Written by a critical thinking trainer and coach, the book presents a pragmatic framework and set of tools to apply critical thinking techniques to everyday business issues. Think Smarter is filled with real world examples that demonstrate how the tools work in action, in addition to dozens of practice exercises applicable across industries and functions, Think Smarter is a versatile resource for individuals, managers, students, and corporate training programs.

Think Smarter provides clear, actionable steps toward improving your critical thinking skills, plus exercises that clarify complex concepts by putting theory into practice.

Learn what questions to ask, how to uncover the real problem to solve, and mistakes to avoid. Recognize assumptions your can rely on versus those without merit, and train your brain to tick through your mental toolbox to arrive at more innovative solutions. Critical thinking is the top skill on the wish list in the business world, and sharpening your ability can have profound affects throughout all facets of life. Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills provides a roadmap to more effective and productive thought.


A SIMPLE SOLUTION 

Have you ever heard a colleague utter the words, “I don’t have to time to think!” If you’re honest with yourself, you’ve probably said them yourself.

This cliche is at the center of problems for organizations around the world, regardless of their size and complexity.

The reality is, that thinking is the most important driver in problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity – no organization can do without it.

According to author Michael Kallet, thinking is the foundation of everything you do, but we rely largely on automatic thinking to process information, often resulting in misunderstandings and errors. Shifting over to critical thinking means thinking purposefully using a framework and toolset, enabling thought processes that lead to better decisions, faster problem solving, and creative innovation. 

Critical thinking is a purposeful method for enhancing your thoughts beyond your automatic, everyday way of thinking. It’a a process that uses a framework and a tool set.

Michael Kallet

The benefits of critical thinking result from changing the way you look at issues, organizing your thoughts, and incorporating others’ thoughts. It simulates new perspectives and prevents distorted views of a situation. As a result, your problem-solving and decision-making skills are enhanced.

The critical thinking process framework, which provides tools and techniques, consists of three components: clarity, conclusions, and decisions.

Clarity

The single most important reason why head scratchers – projects, initiatives, problem solving, decisions, or strategies – go awry is that the head scratcher itself – the situation, issue, or goal – isn’t clear in the first place. Clarity allows us to define what the issue, problem, or goal really is. 

Conclusions

After you are clear on what issue you must address, you have to figure out what to do about it. Conclusions are solutions and a list of actions (to-dos) related to your issue.

Decisions

Once you have come to a conclusion about what actions to take, you have to actually decide to take the action – and do it.

Most people combine conclusions and decisions when they’re asked about problem solving or decision making, saying, “I need to decide what to do.” However, it’s important to separate conclusions and decisions, because the thinking processed for each are very different.

The space around clarity, conclusions, and decisions is filled with discovery, information, and ideas. These three concepts include asking questions, exploring ideas, listening to responses, and conducting research.

Michael Kallet, Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

A NEXT STEP

As noted in the Quick Summary above, author Michael Kallet has provided many tools and suggestions throughout Think Smarter that will help you grasp and apply the critical thinking process framework. Here is just one that most leaders practice daily, yet hardly think about: email.

Start critical thinking practice with inspecting and writing emails. Not only is this easy and good practice, but there’s also an important side advantage. Write your email; then before you hit Send, ask, “Is what I’m about to send clear? Could the recipient misinterpret what I’ve written?” You’ll reap three benefits from this.

First, you’ll find your emails are shorter, because clarity often takes fewer words.

Second, your thoughts will be clearer and better organized.

Third, and most important, your emails will be more easily understood, resulting in potentially huge productivity gains.

What happens if you send an unclear email to someone? The recipient will respond with a question, which you’ll then have to answer. The result is at least three emails generated instead of one. Going further, consider how many emails would be sent around if you copied five people on an unclear email. Even worse, what happens if you send an unclear email out, and instead of asking questions, people just start to do their own interpretations of your email.

Imagine the productivity gains of critically thinking about just your most important emails every day.

Effective Remote Leaders Practice the 10 Principles of the Future Manager

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Your team has probably been working remotely for most of the last year now, and even as discussions about “opening up” begin to become more prevalent, it’s likely that remote work will continue in some form for the foreseeable future.

That’s the question Google is tacking with a new set of policies recently rolled out by the company’s CEO. They center around just three words:

Flexibility and Choice.

What may have been quick emergency actions like having the basic tools and defining remote processes is now moving toward a new normal.

To make it through the current crisis and return to that new normal, you and your team will need to be resilient. The good news is that leaders can help create the conditions that make this possible.

As Bryan Miles, CEO and cofounder of BELAY, a leading U.S.-based, virtual solutions company says:

“Productivity comes from people completing their tasks in a timely, professional, adult manner, not from daily attendance in a sea of cubicles and offices.”

How will you lead your team through both this changing tide and likely new normal?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Future of Work by Jacob Morgan

Throughout the history of business employees had to adapt to managers and managers had to adapt to organizations. In the future this is reversed with managers and organizations adapting to employees. This means that in order to succeed and thrive organizations must rethink and challenge everything they know about work.

The demographics of employees are changing and so are employee expectations, values, attitudes, and styles of working. Conventional management models must be replaced with leadership approaches adapted to the future employee. Organizations must also rethink their traditional structure, how they empower employees, and what they need to do to remain competitive in a rapidly changing world.  

This is a book about how employees of the future will work, how managers will lead, and what organizations of the future will look like.  

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Like so many other things in the leader’s life, leading and managing your team has changed a great deal over the past few years. With exponential changes in technology driving new ways to “work,” it seems as change was the only constant.

Leaders may have refused these changes, or grudgingly accepted them, or even welcomed them. 

And then came COVID-19, and those changes which leaders may have resisted became the only way to move forward.

The future is here.

Managers of the future are going to have to challenge the traditional ideas of management and push back against the many business practices that are outdated and no longer relevant. they will have to adapt to the future employee, which means new ways of working and thinking about work. 

Jacob Morgan

Today with the advances in technology around the way we work, many employees can work from anywhere, anytime, and on any device. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting “social distancing” requirements enacted by various levels of government, this was put into practice on a scale larger than ever before – and in a very short amount of time.

The technological framework may have been there, but where many are struggling is around the strategic approach to empower this change. The notion of working 9 to 5 in a cubicle and commuting to an office is dead.

In order to adapt, the future manager must understand and practice the following 10 principles:

  • Be a leader.
  • Follow from the front.
  • Understand technology.
  • Lead by example.
  • Embrace vulnerability.
  • Believe in sharing and collective intelligence.
  • Challenge convention and be a fire starter.
  • Practice real-time recognition and feedback.
  • Be conscious of personal boundaries.
  • Adapt to the future employee.

Jacob Morgan, The Future of Work

A NEXT STEP

How are you exhibiting the ten principles listed above as a leader of remote teams?

Set aside at least one hour to reflect on the list above, using the following thoughts by author Jacob Morgan:

Be a leader.

Do you exert control and manage work or inspire, engage, challenge, and lead your team? Why?

Follow from the front.

Do you work at removing roadblocks from the paths of employees to help them succeed, or do you lead from the top of your organization? Why?

Understand technology.

Do you try to stay aware of how new technologies can be leveraged to help empower your team, or are you slow to react to change? Why?

Lead by example.

Do you provide team support by providing resources and making an appearance, or do you change to meet new challenges and show everyone how you are changing? Why?

Embrace vulnerability.

Do you have the courage to show up and be seen, connecting with your team, or are you aloof and out-of-sight? Why?

Believe in sharing and collective intelligence.

Do you tap into the wisdom, experience, ideas, and knowledge of your team, or do you try to be the Lone Ranger Leader? Why?

Challenge convention and be a fire starter.

Do you practice and promote conventional ideas, taking things at face value, or are you curious and always seeking the “new”? Why?

Practice real-time recognition and feedback.

Do you follow a one directional flow of recognition and feedback on a periodic basis, or do you practice real-time, bi-directional feedback? Why?

Be conscious of personal boundaries.

Your team working remotely is always connected. Do you take advantage of this (even inadvertently) or do you know how to draw a firm line? Why?

Adapt to the future employee.

Our society was already in a fast-paced mode, and the current COVID-19 crisis has the potential for even more rapid change. Your team will have changing needs as an employee — are you changing as a leader to meet them? Why?

5 Ways to Utilize Questions as Leadership Tools

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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.

SOLUTION – Utilize Questions as Leadership Tools

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Leading With Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask by Michael J. Marquardt

Many leaders are unaware of the amazing power of questions. Our conversations may be full of requests and demands, but all too often we are not asking for honest and informative answers, and we don’t know how to listen effectively to responses. When leaders start encouraging questions from their teams, however, they begin to see amazing results. Knowing the right questions to ask―and the right way to listen―will give any leader the skills to perform well in any situation, effectively communicate a vision to the team, and achieve lasting success across the organization.

Thoroughly revised and updated, Leading with Questions will help you encourage participation and teamwork, foster outside-the-box thinking, empower others, build relationships with customers, solve problems, and more. Michael Marquardt reveals how to determine which questions will lead to solutions to even the most challenging issues. He outlines specific techniques of active listening and follow-up, and helps you understand how questions can improve the way you work with individuals, teams, and organizations.

Now more than ever, Leading with Questions is the definitive guide for becoming a stronger leader by identifying―and asking―the right questions.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Questioning is more important today than it was yesterday – and will be even more important tomorrow – in helping us figure out what matters, where opportunity lies, and how to get there. We’re all hungry for better answers. But first, we need to learn how to ask the right questions.

Asking more of the right questions reduces the need to have all the answers.

The better we as leaders become at asking effective questions and listening for the answers to those questions, the more consistent we and the people with whom we work can accomplish mutually satisfying objectives, be empowered, reduce resistance, and create a willingness to pursue innovative change.

Asking questions can be, and often is, a very simple process. When, however, you find that you are confronting a very difficult issue, and you want to plan things out ahead of time, it can be useful to follow a simple process.

Breaking the Ice

It is useful to start with casual questions to put people at ease and get them talking. A simple closed question (“Is this a good time to talk?”) can often get the ball rolling. Friendly, open-ended questions (“How’s your day been?”) can be used to encourage the other person to open up.

Setting the Stage

As you are setting the stage, you are framing the question by establishing the context and background for the conversation. Setting the stage is primarily bout you, not the other person. A learner mindset, not a judger mindset, is critical to getting free and honest answers and open conversation.

Asking Your Questions

When asking questions, keep your focus on the questioner and the question. The quality of the response is affected not only by the content of the question but also by its manner of delivery, especially its pace and timing. Remember that you are engaging in a conversation, not an interrogation, and you should be prepared to be questioned in turn as the conversation moves along.

Listening and Showing Interest in the Response

When you get a response, say “thank you.” This will increase the likelihood that you’ll get more and deeper answers the next time you ask. When your questioning respects people’s thought processes, you support their own questioning of long-held assumptions. To be an effective questioner, wait for the answer – don’t provide it yourself.

Following Up 

Someone who has openly and thoughtfully answered your questions deserves to know what you did the with information. The process will have to produce meaningful, positive change. By learning how to follow up efficiently and effectively in an extremely busy world, leaders will enable key stakeholders to see the positive actions that result from the input they were requested to provide.

Michael J. Marquardt, Leading With Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask

A NEXT STEP 

By consciously adopting a learning mindset, we can become more open to new possibilities and ask questions more effectively.

Author Michael Marquardt provided the following suggestions to help you coach others and adopt a learning attitude:

  • Respond without judging the thoughts, feelings, or situations of other people.
  • Consider yourself a beginner, regardless of experience.
  • Avoid focusing on your own role and take the role of an outside observer, researcher, or reporter.
  • Look at the situation from multiple perspectives, especially your respondents’.
  • Look for win-win solutions.
  • Be tolerant of yourself and others.
  • Ask clarifying questions.
  • Accept change as a constant, and embrace it.

Spend a few minutes in prayer, asking God for wisdom and discernment in your own growth as a leader. After this time, re-read the above list, and decide which action should be a seven-day focus for you. Make a list of people and situations in which you can employ this action, and spend the next few days intentionally pursing growth in this area. Revisit the list in a week and repeat as necessary.

All Endings Set Up New Beginnings

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Among the many, many lessons from 2020, one certainly has to be that the pace of everything has accelerated.

At Auxano, we always strive to serve church leaders to the best of our ability

When the last two intersect, it’s time to make changes…

As we, like every church leader right now, assess everything we are presently doing in order to maximize future impact, it’s clear that even some of our best resources need to change.

The last issue of SUMS Remix was delivered Thursday, April 22*.

If all you’re doing is the jobs you used to do, you’re certainly missing out on the contributions you’re capable of.

Seth Godin

Those who know me know my personality style, emotional makeup, and characteristics. If you don’t, this should give you a clue:

  • Myers-Briggs – INTJ
  • DISC – C (almost exclusively)
  • Insights – Blue (deep, deep, blue)
  • Enneagram – 5, wing 6
  • Fascination Archetype – The Archer
  • Strengths Finder – Learner, Intellection, Input
  • APEST – Teaching

There’s more, but you get the drift.

SUMS Remix, and SUMS before it, have been an integral part of my work life since the fall of 2012. The idea of a creating a book summary product was one of my three primary tasks when I joined Auxano earlier that year.

Anything connected to reading, learning, and curiosity about the world around us was a natural fit for me – I have been a reader for as long as I can remember. It was instilled in me and modeled by my father, orchestrated by my mother, and a natural part of my brother’s and my childhood.

By the numbers, here’s where I’ve been:

  • 8 years, 5 months of constant production cycles for SUMS and SUMS Remix
  • 227 issues (includes 6 special, “commissioned” issues)
  • 574 books referenced
  • Several hundred more considered, but not used
  • 6 vertical book towers and two shelves in my office, holding the above referenced books
  • 3 postal carriers, and dozens of Amazon drivers, making regular visits to my house
  • 1 very gifted team: Bryan Rose, Andrea Kandler, and James Bethany – creative input, grammar and style development, and graphic designer, respectively. They made it happen, week after week.

And it’s over.

Better is possible… if we care enough to walk away from what was  and brave enough to build something new. 

Seth Godin

To best meet challenges facing leaders in a post-pandemic, accelerated-pace-of-ministry life, our team is redirecting our resources used to produce SUMS Remix to a laser-focus on these four areas:

  • Vision Clarity – because the post-pandemic church must be even more engaging and focus on accomplishing their unique disciple-making call
  • Visionary Planning – because every ministries and leaders must work in complete alignment toward a collaborative understanding of God’s better future
  • Generosity Culture – because giving has been steady over the last year, but we must grow everyone to be generous disciples
  • Generosity Campaign – because healthy growth requires resources, and how the church funds large-scale initiatives must change

If any of those areas resonate within you or your leadership and you would like to know more about how the Auxano team can help your leadership in this new era, just fill out this connection card and one of our Navigators will reach out and schedule a quick call.

I’ve already jumped headfirst into the world of research and writing for engagement, real-time development of content that leaders are asking questions about, and supporting our Navigators in their onsite and virtual journeys with churches across the country.

When it comes to books and reading, I’m still making weekly trips to the library, still curious about the world around us, and still adding to my “To Be Read” lists, because…

Want to talk books, ideas, and such? Leave a comment below!

* That day is significant in many ways, not the least of which it was the only issue (out of 221 SUMS and SUMS Remix) that was not delivered on our “every other Wednesday” target, which began in October 2012. Just sayin’…

If You Want to Solve Your Problems, Change the Problems You Solve

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What’s at stake if teams do a poor job of solving problems? From a long list of potential answers, four stand out:

  • Lost time: Poor team problem solving simply burns more time. It may be more time in a meeting itself, because there were no collaboration guidelines. Perhaps it’s lost time outside of the meeting in hallway conversations, because ideas weren’t fully explored or vetted.
  • Dissipated energy: Poor team problem solving leaves questions unanswered and half-baked solutions in the atmosphere. We don’t know exactly where we stand or what we’ve decided. The thought of revisiting an unfinished conversation itself is an unwelcome burden.
  • Mediocre ideas: Poor team problem solving fortifies our weakest thinking. Innovation is something we read about but never experience. We cut-and-paste the ideas of others, because we don’t know how to generate our own. We traffic in good ideas and miss great ones.
  • Competing visions: Poor team problem solving invites an unhealthy drift toward independence. No one has the conscious thought that they have a competing vision. But in reality, there are differences to each person’s picture of their future. It’s impossible for this divergence not to happen if there is no dialogue.

So, how do you start to create the dynamic of collaborative problem solving?  

THE QUICK SUMMARY – What’s Your Problem? To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

Are you solving the right problems? Have you or your colleagues ever worked hard on something, only to find out you were focusing on the wrong problem entirely? Most people have. In a survey, 85 percent of companies said they often struggle to solve the right problems. The consequences are severe: Leaders fight the wrong strategic battles. Teams spend their energy on low-impact work. Startups build products that nobody wants. Organizations implement “solutions” that somehow make things worse, not better. Everywhere you look, the waste is staggering. As Peter Drucker pointed out, there’s nothing more dangerous than the right answer to the wrong question.

There is a way to do better.

The key is reframing, a crucial, underutilized skill that you can master with the help of this book. Using real-world stories and unforgettable examples like “the slow elevator problem,” author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg offers a simple, three-step method – Frame, Reframe, Move Forward – that anyone can use to start solving the right problems. Reframing is not difficult to learn. It can be used on everyday challenges and on the biggest, trickiest problems you face. In this visually engaging, deeply researched book, you’ll learn from leaders at large companies, from entrepreneurs, consultants, nonprofit leaders, and many other breakthrough thinkers.

It’s time for everyone to stop barking up the wrong trees. Teach yourself and your team to reframe, and growth and success will follow.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

For almost all problems that leaders face, by the time the problem reaches them, someone has probably framed if for them.

  • Complaints about elevators? They’re old and slow – they need to be replaced.
  • Team problems? Do they blame failure on others? Do they resist following you? Do they lack passion?
  • Productivity issues? Do you always run out of time on projects? Lack the resources to complete the job?

Author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg wants you to look at problems like these differently, with two thoughts in mind.

First, the way you frame a problem determines which solutions you come up with. 

And, by shifting the way you see the problem – by reframing it – you can sometimes find radically better solutions.

Sometimes, to solve a hard problem, you have to stop looking for solutions to it. Instead, you must turn your attention to the problem itself – not just to analyze it, but to shift the way you frame it.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

Step 1 – Frame

This is the trigger for the process. In practice, it starts with someone asking, “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?” The resulting statement – ideally written down – is your first framing of the problem.

Step 2 – Reframe

Reframe is where you challenge your initial understanding of the problem. The aim is to rapidly uncover as many potential alternative framings as possible. You can think of it as a kind of brainstorming, only instead of ideas, you are looking for different ways to frame the problem. This might come in the form of questions or in the form of direct suggestions.

There are five nested strategies to help find these alternative framings of the problem. Depending on the situation, you may explore some, all, or none of these:

  • Look outside the frame. What are we missing?
  • Rethink the goal. Is there a better objective to pursue?
  • Examine bright spots. Where is the problem not?
  • Look in the mirror. What is my/our role in creating this problem?
  • Take their perspective. What is their problem?

Step 3 – Move Forward

This closes the loop and switches you back into action mode. This can be a continuation of your current course, a move to explore some of the new framings you came up with, or both.

Your key task here is to determine how you validate the faming of your problem though real-world testing, making sure your diagnosis is correct. At this point, a subsequent reframing check-in may be scheduled as well.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, What’s Your Problem? To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve

A NEXT STEP 

In addition to the wealth of resources provided by the author, he provides an excellent section of how to create multiple working hypotheses when considering how to reframe a problem.

To consider multiple working hypotheses is to simultaneously explore several different explanations for what might be going on. By doing this upfront, you inoculate yourself against the danger of a single perspective.

Choose a problem that you are facing or expect to face in the near future, and work through the following approach in reframing it:

  • Never commit to just one explanation up front.
  • Explore multiple explanations simultaneously until sufficient empirical testing has revealed the best choice.
  • Be open to the idea that the best fit may be a mix of several different explanations.
  • Be prepared to walk away if something better comes along later.

Begin addressing a problem by coming up with other viewpoints and solutions at the beginning so you can avoid falling in love with a bad idea. And remember that problems almost always have more than one solution.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 142-2, released March 2020

8 Reasons Great Leaders Understand the Value of Questions

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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.

How to Recognize – and Avoid – Problem Blindness as a Leader

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What’s at stake if teams do a poor job of solving problems? From a long list of potential answers, four stand out:

  • Lost time: Poor team problem solving simply burns more time. It may be more time in a meeting itself, because there were no collaboration guidelines. Perhaps it’s lost time outside of the meeting in hallway conversations, because ideas weren’t fully explored or vetted.
  • Dissipated energy: Poor team problem solving leaves questions unanswered and half-baked solutions in the atmosphere. We don’t know exactly where we stand or what we’ve decided. The thought of revisiting an unfinished conversation itself is an unwelcome burden.
  • Mediocre ideas: Poor team problem solving fortifies our weakest thinking. Innovation is something we read about but never experience. We cut-and-paste the ideas of others, because we don’t know how to generate our own. We traffic in good ideas and miss great ones.
  • Competing visions: Poor team problem solving invites an unhealthy drift toward independence. No one has the conscious thought that they have a competing vision. But in reality, there are differences to each person’s picture of their future. It’s impossible for this divergence not to happen if there is no dialogue.

So, how do you start to create the dynamic of collaborative problem solving?

SOLUTION #1: Avoid problem blindness

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention?

Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas.

Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Author Dan Heath believes that with some foresight, we can prevent problems before they happen, and even when we can’t stop them entirely, we can often blunt their impact.

Of course, there are barriers to this line of thinking, and the first of those barriers is profoundly simple: you can’t solve a problem you don’t see, or one that you perceive to be a regrettable but inevitable condition of life.

Problem blindness is the first barrier to upstream thinking. When we don’t see a problem, we can’t solve it. And that blindness can create passivity even in the face of enormous harm. To move upstream, we must first overcome problem blindness.

Problem blindness, also know as inattentional blindness, is a phenomenon in which our careful attention to one task leads us to miss important information that’s unrelated to that task.

Inattentional blindness leads to a lack of peripheral vision. When it’s coupled with time pressure, it can create a lack of curiosity. I’ve got to stay focused on what I’m doing. 

The escape from problem blindness begins with the shock of awareness that you’ve come to treat the abnormal as normal.

Next comes a search for community: Do other people feel this way? And with that recognition – that this phenomenon is a problem and we see it the same way – comes strength.

Something remarkable often happens next: People voluntarily hold themselves responsible for fixing problems they did not create. The upstream advocate concludes: I was not the one who created this problem. But I will be the one to fix it.

Dan Heath, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

A NEXT STEP

How can you, personally, move upstream? Consider your own problem blindness, Which problems have you come to accept as inevitable that are, in fact, nothing of the kind?

A hallmark of work by both author Dan Heath as well as his brother Chip is the excellent resources they provide. One of those is a book club guide.

Here are a few questions drawn from that guide, relating to the topic of problem blindness. Set aside some time to both reflect and act on them,

  1. Problem blindness is the belief that negative outcomes are natural or inevitable. Do you think your organization suffers from problem blindness? If so, in what areas?
  2. “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets” is a quote often used in leadership circles. Does this idea resonate with you? What examples do you see in your organization?
  3. When people reflect on our society 50 years from now, what areas do you think they will be shocked by, areas that we are suffering from problem blindness?

Part of a regular series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader.

During my elementary school years one of the things I looked forward to the most was the delivery of “My Weekly Reader,” a weekly educational magazine designed for children and containing news-based current events.

It became a regular part of my love for reading, and helped develop my curiosity about the world around us.