I love to listen to a good podcast when driving down the road. Today Spotify set me up with a Maxwell Leadership podcast featuring Don Yaeger. Don has a pretty brag worthy story about going one on one with Michael Jordan on a basketball court. Listen for this story alone. It’s pretty cool.
What caught my attention and had me asking Google to “take note,” was Don’s response to the question what makes a great leader? Don said great leaders ask great questions. Not the first time I have heard this response.
Great leaders spend most of their time listening. But great leaders are busy. They need to be efficient with their time. To be efficient leaders create conversations by using great questions asked in the a particular order.
In my own experience asking questions in right order helps an individual or a group move from confusion to clarity. It is both an an art and a science to facilitate these conversations with intention and purpose. I have been a participant and a facilitator for these types of conversations.
As a participant in these conversations I found the conversations to be a bit like cooking. You find out what the ingredients are, you see what you have available, you make adjusts as needed, you cook and you have a pretty good outcome.
If you follow the recipe in a different order you spend a lot of time running back and forth to the pantry, you question if you have the right recipe, are people even interested in eating what I’m making and so forth. Your frustration increases because you did not follow the process and your outcome tastes like dirt.
Conversational questions follow a process too. When you ask the right questions in the right order you can get to the desired outcome. When you don’t you’re likely going to have the conversation again or quit all together.
Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitation Methods has a method that uses a process to write and conduct questions that get people talking so that a leader can listen. You can find out more about these methods by participating in a course offered by my training team at Great Plains Facilitators or register for one of the classes I have on my course calendar.
