7 Fast Lessons from ‘Good Leaders Ask Great Questions’

Hey everyone,

Following on from my last book by John C. Maxwell, I bought another one of his books.

This one was ‘Good Leaders Ask Great Questions’.

This was 8+ hours so a little long and not as good as 21 Immutable Laws of Leadership, which I loved.

Still a bunch of great lessons which I’ll share with you below.

Key lessons:

1. Why questions are so important – Richard Thalheimer, the founder of Sharper Image once said – “It is better to look uninformed than to be uninformed.”
2. If you’re not making progress on something, it’s almost always because you haven’t asked enough questions to get clarity on the problem so finding the solution is inevitably tough.
3. “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions” – Peter Drucker.
4. The people closest to the problem usually have the best answers to the solution, quiz them.
5. Tony Robbins always says “Ask better questions, get better answers”
6. A good doctor (and a good salesperson for that matter) will spend a long time asking questions until they accurately understand their problem, then offer a solution
7. Be comfortable with not knowing everything – your job is the make (largely correct) decisions, not to look perfect. Comfortable leaders don’t mind looking stupid if it gives them clarity so they can make an informed decision about a situation. They are comfortable being wrong, but they know by consistently asking great questions they will make the right decision, quickly – more often than not.

Great questions to ask your team:

• What do you think?
• How can I serve you?
• What do I need to communicate?
• Did we exceed expectations?
• What did you learn?
• Did we add value?
• How do we maximize this experience?
• What do I need to know?
• How are the numbers?

When dealing with difficult people:

• How much of my energy will I let them take?
• How much of my time will I let them take?
• How much of my focus will I let them take?
• How much of my joy will I let them take?
• How much of my resources will I let them take?

I think the above would save you reading this book – it was definitely good but wouldn’t recommend reading this – go for the aforementioned John C. Maxwell book.

Next book is on mindset – ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ by Haruki Murakami.

My brother recommended this to me, it’s about a marathon runner who is also an excellent writer and he talks about the mindset of running and how it applies to life – really keen to read this.

Cheers,

Ray