Engaging Leadership

Engaging Leadership is "leading with questions". It recognizes the difference between 2 kinds of questions:

Analytical Questions
Engaging Questions

Analytical Questions ask for information so the question asker can learn the facts needed to generate a solution. People love being solution generators or answer givers. It's fun to devise great solutions. It's like scoring goals in sports. But you're operating more as an individual contributor than as a leader when you do so.

Engaging Questions fall into two types: "What do you think?" and "What do you want?" Both questions draw out the ideas, suggestions, wants and needs of others to create shared ownership of solutions.

Analytical questions help us make good decisions but if you focus too much on them, you disempower others, treating them only as data sources. Using an engaging leadership style does not mean never asking analytical questions. You can be strategic about yourself by choosing which kind of question is best for a given situation.

What do you think?

These questions are solution focused, they don't look for the cause of a problem or someone to blame. Typical examples:

What do you think are some possible solutions to this problem?
What do you see as the pros and cons of your preferred solution?
What obstacles or risks do you see and how might we avoid them?

What do you want?

Use these questions to find out what others really want, such as a dissatisfied client:

How would you like this situation to be different?
What is your preferred option and why is it best for you?
What would you like us to do differently?

You can make suggestions in both of these situations by asking about the suitability of your proposal:

When someone has no answer for your "What do you think?" question, ask "How do you think X might work better than Y to solve this problem?"

When the other party isn't sure what they want or how you can help, ask "How would our doing X rather than Y better meet your needs?"

Posing your suggestions as questions encourages the other party to take as much ownership for the solution as possible to foster a co-created decision.

Engaging leadership

Engaging leadership is similar to participative leadership except that it's more proactive in drawing ideas out of people rather than just being passively open to suggestions.

Engaging leadership is a bit like active listening but more proactive. Active listening is reactive in that you're just responding to someone’s comment with questions or encouraging words to help them express themselves more fully. Engaging leadership uses questions to get people to come up with new ideas that may not have occurred to them otherwise.

Advantages of an Engaging Leadership Style

Potentially better solutions
Broader ownership of plans and decisions
Greater engagement and empowerment of everyone involved in devising solutions
Increased motivation and commitment compared to just telling people what to do
A demonstration that you value people by seeking their opinions
Greater team spirit created by fuller involvement in solving problems
Helping people grow by acting as a coach

Selling an Engaging Leadership Style

Bosses who see themselves as having all the answers disempower team members. The motivation of team members is greater when their views are valued. An engaging leadership style is best sold to team members by explaining how it’s in their interest to be more involved in decisions. It will empower and develop them and help them feel a greater share of ownership and commitment to any decisions made. When bosses tell their team members their solutions, it’s like feeding them fish while asking them what they think is teaching them to fish.

If you stick to offering your solutions, you’re operating as an individual contributor but when asking engaging questions, you’re acting as a leader because your focus is on getting more out of people. In the old days, “getting work done through people” meant simply delegating tasks. Now, in an age of knowledge work, this focus needs to be balanced by tapping into people’s brain power to “get mental work done through people.”

Applications of Engaging Leadership

Delegation

Directive leaders tell team members in detail what needs to be done and by when. Engaging leaders state the objective and a timeframe, then ask engaging questions such as: “What would be your plan for getting this done?” “What steps would you take?” "What obstacles do you anticipate?” “How would you get around these obstacles?” "What risks are there and how would you mitigate them?" Two advantages of this approach: 1. The team member owns the plan and is thus more motivated to deliver on it. 2. You learn in advance if the team member is going to take a wrong turn.

Let’s say that the team member lists the steps to be taken as A, B, C, D… But you know that step D will not work. Say something positive about the first three steps and then ask an engaging question such as: “If you do step D and x, y or z problems arise, then what would you do?” If the team member can’t think of a better option to D, again stay in engaging mode by asking “What about a step such as E, instead of D, how do you think that would work?” That is, you’re making your suggestion in the form of an engaging question. This is more motivational and empowering than saying “D won’t work, do E instead.” Switching to telling is quicker but it fosters dependency on you as the ultimate know-it-all. This is self-defeating if you want to really get more done through others (mental work).

Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are too top-down. Team members are in a passive role expecting to be clobbered for all their failings. This creates defensiveness, blaming and poor ownership of mistakes.

A more engaging style starts with asking team members to do most of the talking, covering 3 topics:

The things you are most proud of that you have completed or progressed since last time
Which things you feel could have gone better
What you plan to do in future to avoid the setbacks in your second list

You can add your input to these 3 lists. For the second list, if they overlook some setback, ask another engaging question: “What do you feel could have gone better with project X?" A focus on what they did well first helps the team member relax and realize that performance appraisal is not only about failings. It gives them a chance to celebrate their successes, which is more motivational than just discussing slip-ups. It's better to ask what they would do next time rather than asking what went wrong. Focus on solutions not on blame and fault-finding.

Some Good Performance Review Questions

What could you do differently next time?
How could you handle that situation more effectively another time?
What can you do to show that you are ready for advancement?
How can you show yourself to be a star performer?
How is this project a leadership opportunity for you?
How can you show more leadership on this project?

Blame Avoidance

When team members say they didn’t get something done because a colleague didn’t finish their part in time, you have an opportunity to foster accountability by asking: “How could you have avoided that setback?” You might explain to them that it always feels better if we challenge ourselves by asking this question: “What could I have done differently?” When we place blame, we disempower ourselves and that doesn’t feel very good. It’s more solution-focused and a sign of accepting accountability to challenge ourselves by asking what we could have done to have avoided any setback. Placing blame is a dead-end.

An Engaging Approach to Improved Teamwork

What can we do to work better as a team?
What can each of us do to collaborate more with each other?
How can we cooperate better with other teams?
What are our key strengths as a team and how can we capitalize on them more?
How can we be better at celebrating success as a team?
What can we do to outshine other teams?

Career Advancement

The following engaging questions can be used for team member for career support:

What kinds of work would you like to do more of?
What kinds of things would you like to learn more about?
How can you learn and advance yourself by volunteering for projects?
Who can you learn from about other lines of work?
What strengths do you have that you can build on or play to more?
What development needs can you address and how can you do it?
What can you do differently or become better at?
How can you step up and show some informal leadership?
What opportunities do you see for improving things around here?

Engaging questions get people thinking and making decisions for themselves. The leader is acting as a coach rather than as a parent with this style. People will feel a greater sense of satisfaction and achievement if they develop their own plans and make their own decisions. The boss who sticks to offering solutions and direction can be seen as paternalistic.

Strategy Development and Innovation

Leaders sometimes get feedback that strategic or innovative thinking, for example, are not among their strengths. Because they are thinking as individual contributors with answers to offer, not as facilitators, they think they have to become more strategic or innovative themselves.

Using an engaging leadership style, leaders can facilitate meetings on strategy or innovation instead of developing these skills in themselves. They can ask colleagues to come to a meeting with new strategic or innovative ideas to discuss as a team. This can be done with direct reports or same-level peers.

How to Challenge Colleagues Constructively

In a meeting where a colleague is proposing a course of action, you might have nothing to say if you don’t know enough about the topic to offer a better solution. This is because you’re wearing a solution generator’s hat instead of a facilitator’s one. With an engaging style, there are always two questions you can ask, even if you know little about the topic or don’t have a strong view about it:

What other options are there?
What are the downsides, risks, costs or broader implications of your idea?

To minimize defensiveness, you might start by saying what you like about your colleague’s proposal before asking one of these questions. It is nearly always possible to ask such questions because most people proposing a course of action will usually only talk about their preferred option and only about its advantages, not the downsides. Wearing a facilitator’s hat, you can broaden the discussion by asking what others in the meeting see as the pros and cons of the proposal or what other options they see.

Influencing Your Boss

If something isn’t working, it can be risky to say so to your boss. Some bosses can feel threatened by a suggestion that they have missed something important. You can use engaging questions to create a greater sense of shared ownership with your boss:

What do you think we could do to make this process more efficient?
What do you feel is working and not working?
What changes do you think we could make?
What options do you see and which one offers the most benefits?
What do you think of option X? (your suggestion) How would that work do you think?

Begin by asking your boss for suggestions with “What do you think?” questions. Then offer your suggestion in an engaging (What do you think?) format so that your boss sees you as asking for suggestions. This way you aren’t showing up your boss but still getting your point across. This is a good way of being assertive without being confrontational.

Adopting an engaging leadership stye does not mean always being engaging. In crisis situations or when only you know what needs to be done or when shared ownership of a decision is not essential, you can make decisions yourself and be directive. It’s a matter of being strategic about yourself: asking yourself how you can add most value now or what is the best approach in a given situation. If you use an engaging leadership style most of the time, you’re gaining permission to be directive when the situation calls for it. This is being strategic about yourself.

An engaging style is most valuable where you need shared ownership of a decision, when you want to influence difficult colleagues or when you want to develop and motivate your team. The key is being able to recognize your normal way of working and when to switch to an engaging style. A clue to your preferred style is noticing whether you ask only analytical questions such as what happened, when, how many. When you ask analytical questions, you’re acting as an individual contributor, one who happens to have authority.

Asking engaging questions shows leadership because it enables you to get more out of people. You’re engaging their brains not just their ability to do things.

See also: 1. Engaging Questions and 2. More Useful Questions.

Sometimes you need to be directive, not engaging. See Directive Leadership

On the value of showing interest, see Showing Interest