How Strategic Questions Build Your Succession Pipeline
I have declared June “coaching month”.
In a 4-part series, I’m here to help you to develop and focus on your coaching skills this month.
In case you missed last week’s post on listening, check it out here.
Today, let’s discuss the next skill: asking powerful questions.
I recently coached an executive who was frustrated with her team’s initiative levels.
“They’re always waiting for me to tell them what to do,” she said.
When I observed her interactions, I noticed something interesting: her questions were unintentionally shutting down thinking rather than stimulating it.
Information-Gathering Questions vs. Open-Ended Questions
Most leaders are trained to ask direct, information-gathering questions:
- “Did you finish the report?”
- “When will this be done?”
- “Who’s responsible for this?”
These questions have their place, but they do little to develop critical thinking or prepare your team for greater leadership responsibilities.
They yield minimal information and keep your team dependent on you for direction.
Open-ended questions invite reflection, stimulate critical thinking, and reveal how your team members approach problems.
When a team member says they’re stuck on a problem, compare these approaches:
- Information-gathering: “Have you tried solution X?” (Yields a yes/no answer)
- Open-ended: “What approaches have you considered so far and what happened when you tried them?” (Reveals thinking process, problem-solving skills, and potential knowledge gaps)
Strategic Questions That Identify High-Potential Talent
Here are three powerful questions that can help you to coach and develop critical thinking on your team:
- Forward-thinking questions: “If we were to tackle this challenge again in six months, what might we do differently?”
- Scalability questions: “How would you approach this if we needed to expand it across the organization?”
- Stakeholder questions: “Who would be impacted by this decision and how might they respond?”
Using these questions is magical!
They help to develop problem-solving skills on your team.
They can also help you tap into leadership potential that might otherwise remain hidden!
