Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask

by Michael J. Marquardt

Book Overview

Many leaders are unaware of the amazing power of questions. Our conversations may be full of requests and demands, but all too often we are not asking for honest and informative answers, and we don't... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787977462
• ISBN13: 9780787977467
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great Read!

While reading this book, I had to have a couple crucial conversations. Prior to going into them I came up with a couple questions that would inspire dialog and happy to report that they went much better than expected. It's nice to have a book that you can relate to and use in daily conversations. I have been a leader for four years and really wish that I had these tools when I started!

Useful Management Book

For over 10 years, I have been teaching the use of questions as a coaching, management, and leadership tool (in MBA programs, internal-organizational coaches in training courses, and coaches in training). This book is the best resource I have found for the use of questioning as a leadership, management, and coaching tool. It gives theory, background and excellent examples in a variety of areas including: managing people; managing change; building strategy; and building teams. The writing style is smooth and easy to read (the print is also easy on the eyes). Michael Marquardt has done a great service for leadership and management development as well as the coaching field. I highly recommend it for leaders, managers, coaches, AND PARENTS. It posits a credible and effective communication style.

practical tool to energize people around you

This is a wonderful book to read for any leader and anyone who facilitates workshops on leadership. When you believe that leadership is about creating a culture, then this book is THE tool for it. As an executive coach, I recommend this book to all my clients since it will give them examples of powerful questions in many different situations. I would also like to point your attention to resource A which deals with Action Learning, another tool that can help break through "stuck team" situations.

You can't obtain the right answers unless you ask the right questions.

In several of my most recent reviews, I have quoted an observation of Peter Drucker's from an article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review (in 1963) and it seems especially relevant to Michael Marquardt's most recently published book, Leading with Questions: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." This is a common mistake, one that can be avoided if the right questions are always asked. Marquardt himself offers an excellent case in point. Before interviewing twenty-two specific leaders around the world, he formulated these five questions: "When did you start using questions and why?" "What are some of the ways you have used questions?" "What questions have been most effective?" "What has been the impact of leading through questions on (a) your organization and (b) you as a leader?" "How has the use of questions changed you as a leader?" The responses that Marquardt accumulated provide the substance of this book. After completing a rigorous analysis of them, he shares a number of important lessons that will help each reader to master what Marquardt correctly characterizes as "an underused management tool." I presume to add that this "tool" should be used by everyone at all levels and in all areas of operation within any organization, whatever its size or nature may be. Marquardt carefully organizes his material within three Parts. First, he explains why questions can be so powerful for individuals and organizations. In Part Two, he offers practical guidance on selecting the right questions and then asking them effectively. In the final part, he presents a number of guidelines which suggest how leaders can use questions to achieve specific results for individuals, teams, and organizations. Resource consists of "Training Programs for Questioning Leaders"; in Resource B, Marquardt provides brief biographies of the aforementioned twenty-two leaders interviewed. Of special interest to me is the material in Chapter 6 in which Marquardt explains how to create a "questioning culture." As clearly indicated in two of his previous books, Action Learning in Action and Optimizing the Power of Action Learning, Marquardt is both a visionary and a pragmatist: He is ever alert for opportunities to increase learning while achieving results, and, he fully understands the nature and extent of various barriers to doing that. Therefore, the information and (more importantly) the counsel he provides with regard to creating a questioning culture immediately focuses on asking the right questions to obtain the information needed, on collaborative interrogation, on capturing and then sharing what is learned, on nurturing innovation through effective use of questions, and on ensuring - meanwhile - that everyone involved has a sense of urgency. With regard to the last point, he observes that effective leaders can demonstrate a sense of purpose "by taking prompt action as issues emerge and by pushi

Creating a Questioning Culture for Powerful Results

"Asking rather than telling, questions rather than answers, has become the key to leadership excellence and success in the twenty-first century." That, in a nutshell, is the premise of this book. Marquardt who has taught and written extensively on action learning shares the wisdom of leading with questions. The book is divided into three sections: The Power of Questions; Asking Questions Effectively; and A Guide for Leaders of Using Questions. Throughout the book the author uses quotes from interviews of top business leaders about their use of questions. The Power of Questions begins with examples of disasters such as the sinking of Titanic, the explosion of the Challenger spacecraft, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. All disasters where the cause is attributed to a lack of questioning. Chapter 2 is a stirring recital of the benefits of questions. Questions open up perspectives, new learning, greater team work, create an empowering environment, help people gain a voice, increases listening, innovation, while reducing conflicts. It sounds like a miracle drug! Except that it's true. Questions are at the core of my business and I can attest to their transformational power! The second part of the book is the strongest. It's the "how to" section on forming questions that will achieve all the benefits mentioned earlier. The author goes beyond simply giving lists of good questions (as some other books on questions do) and teaches you how to actually form a powerful question. Good questions he says are, "those that accomplish their purpose as well as build a positive relationship between the questioner and the questionee." He gives plenty of tips how to do this. He also addresses hinderances such as a judging or blame mentality. The final section of the book puts questions into practice in various settings such as supervision, problem solving, and team building. Each chapter covers a different setting with 10-20 key questions and how to use them effectively. Leading with questions is one of those skills where you think, "Yes, I want to be this way. Help me do it!" Leading with questions is a skill that requires breaking old habits and forming new more productive ones. Are you ready to increase your learning? Are you ready to tap into the potential of the people around you? Are you ready to make breakthroughs and create innovations? Then questions are for you! What are you waiting for?