High Performance Leadership

In every workshop I facilitate - every one - I share this important piece of wisdom from one of my mentors, Andrew Oxley: "if you don't like the answer to a question, ask a better question." That's profound. That's powerful. That's endlessly useful. Often, people will struggle with that. Sometimes they ask, "How do you ask better questions? What if you can't think of one?" Here's the answer. Ask with curiosity and you'll think of better questions. Stay curious, my friend. -- doug smith

photo of Rusty by Judi Madigan How curious are you? In my workshops on communication and achieving your goals I point out how important it is to listen with curiosity. We are most attentive when we are most curious. Instead of jumping to conclusions or judging before it's necessary, high performance leaders center their listening around staying curious. How do you do that? One way is by asking relevant questions. One of my mentors, Lester T. Shapiro (who wrote the book  The Training Effectiveness Handbook ) once said that the primary role of leaders is to ask relevant questions. Here are some questions that I've found extremely relevant and that help me to remain curious: What is your case? We are always building a case and  not  always aware of the case that we're building or why. It might not even serve our best interests, and yet we can talk ourselves into anything. Stay curious about what you really want, what you think you want and (most importantly) ...