As a leader, sometimes you must have answers…or at least know where to get the answers. But it’s also important to have questions.
Not just any questions. The right questions. Questions that encourage the best and most powerful answers. Empowering Questions.
Empowering questions are framed in a way the engages the person responding more deeply into their feelings and opinions. They allow for a more full and complete expression of the situation than simple “either/or” or “yes/no” questions.
Empowering Questions are:
Open-Ended – allowing a free-flowing exchange of ideas, rather than a forced choice between two or more answers.
Unbiased – framed with an exploring word without telegraphing the correct response or the opinion of the person asking the question
Emotionally Neutral – phrased without implying a judgment of the past or anxiety about the future
Goal-Centered – based on exploring how a decision or course of action contributes toward achievement of the goal
Future-Focused – centered on creating positive change for the future.
Empowering questions open the door to invite your team to explore the greatest number of possibilities with the best likelihood of a positive outcome. When you ask empowering questions, your team becomes more engaged and takes ownership of the outcome because they have been part of its creation.
Asking empowering questions can also help to reveal and overcome resistance to a particular course of action before that resistance becomes destructive. Empowering questions can encourage your team members to creative ways to overcome barriers and create solutions.
Closed-ended questions take the power away from the respondent by implying there is a single right answer. These questions often begin with, “Do,” “Does,” or “Would,” rather than the more expansive beginnings of “How,” and “What.”
Here are some examples of empowering questions that can lead to powerful answers:
What could be different?
What’s the best possible outcome?
What else can be done?
What matters most here?
How can we accomplish this?
Whether you are asking questions in a team setting or in a private conversation, when you use open-ended and empowering questions, you are creating a shared solution where everyone involved takes ownership for the answer. That ownership builds trust and motivation to contribute to the shared goal.
In today’s crowded and competitive marketplace, you need your business to have the best possible solutions for your customers.
Empowering questions will give you the capacity to do just that.
Blessings,
Chris