Smart questions get results. Uninformed questions get you nowhere. Those are two facts that apply in all circumstances—in all areas of life.
For instance, we’ve had a streetlight near our house that has not worked for more than two years. One of my best friends happens to be the City Council representative for our neighborhood, so I contacted him about the light not working. He forwarded my emailed question, “Why is this light not working?” to someone in the city’s public works department and their response was prompt but unhelpful: “A contractor cut the power to the light.”
Clearly, I didn’t ask the right question.
I’m reminded of a CEO who presented a budget to his board for the coming year, and that budget included a rather large profit projection. Later in the year, they totally missed their budget and actually lost money—a total reversal of what they had projected. The board wanted to know why this happened, and the CEO offered multiple reasons for missing the projections.
Ultimately, the CEO was reassigned to another business and a new CEO was brought in. But the board never got a real answer because they weren’t asking the right questions.
In my early coaching career, I focused on sales coaching. As we all know, salespeople can be persuasive. It’s part of the job, after all. I remember how frustrating a session could be when a salesperson would offer multiple reasons why they weren’t achieving their quota/goals. Actually, these weren’t reasons at all; they were excuses. And no matter how much of an “expert” the salesperson was on why he was underachieving, his responses offered no usable solutions or roadmaps to getting back on track.
I know now I wasn’t asking the right questions.
In the streetlight example, my original question to my City Council friend, and subsequently the city employee, should have been: “How do we get this streetlight working again?” The answer to that question would have directly led to a way to actually fix the problem.
In the second example, the board was focused on “why” they had missed the forecast not “how” they could get on track to meet expectations. Sure, they might not have reached their original projections, but pursuing corrective measures with “how” questions not “why” questions would have not only helped the current year’s budget but would also have set up next year’s budget projections for success.
In my sales coaching example, I learned to change the subject when a salesperson would tell me all the reasons why they were underachieving. I would redirect the conversation and ask, “But what are you doing now—actively and right now—to achieve your quota/goals?”
I’m not saying we must ignore the reasons why things aren’t working or why things are going poorly. That matters to a point. But what matters more than why is how to fix something, correct course or take responsibility and just get the job done. The bulk of the conversation—and the questions that guide that conversation—should be about how to be successful at whatever the conversation is about.
Before you ask questions, ask yourself: “What is the right question? What do I need to ask that will move the situation/project forward and achieve results?” Then begin asking the questions.
If you ask the right questions, you’ll do what you do better.