Great Leaders Ask Great Question, Part 1 Transcript

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Andy Stanley (00:02):
 Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further, faster. I'm Andy Stanley. And before we get into today's content, I want to share a special offer from our friends at Belay. As a leader, one of your most valuable resources, of course, is your time. When your days are filled with emails, bookkeeping, and other administrative tasks, you get stuck spending your time maintaining the business rather than growing it. And that's where Belay can help. For over a decade, Belay has matched busy leaders like you with highly vetted US-based assistants and financial experts, real people you can trust to keep your business running while you focus on doing what only you can do. To help you get started, Belay is offering a free download of their book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Saving 10 Plus Hours a Week. This practical resource will help you create more margins so you can focus on growing your business.

(01:00):
To claim this offer, just text the word Andy to 55123, that's A-N-D-Y, to 55123 to start delegating and free up your leadership with Belay. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go further, faster. And today is the fifth episode of a special series based on my book, What Great Leaders Do. And facilitating the conversation is my co-host, Holly Goddard. Holly's been a part of our organization for 15 years in multiple leadership roles, and she currently serves as the chief of staff at our largest campus.

Holly Goddard (01:38):
Yeah, that's right. Grateful to be on the bus. And I'm loving being part of these conversations because Andy, walking through your book, it's like taking a masterclass except for I have homework. I got to go into my day job and do the thing. So it's incredibly -

Andy Stanley (01:52):
Especially after these conversations, because I feel like I do too.

Holly Goddard (01:55):
Yes.

Andy Stanley (01:55):
Because just because you teach something doesn't mean you've completely integrated it into leadership. And honestly, even writing the book from time to time, I found myself thinking, "Oh, have I drifted from this? Am I still doing this stuff?" It's very practical, it works, but it's just easy to fall into bad habits.

Holly Goddard (02:13):
Well, it's a great accountability check. And so every week, hopefully I'm becoming a little more great. I'm trying to at least anyway. And we've talked about several topics already. We've talked about how great leaders lead themselves well. We've talked about how as a great leader's got to play to their strengths, got to. And then today we're diving into essential number three, great leaders ask great questions. And I love this one. It sounds simple, but it's not really that simple. In fact, you teach us that the questions a leader asks and how they respond to questions, that's what creates a culture in an environment.

Andy Stanley (02:48):
Yeah. So questions are strategy and it took me a while to figure this out, but I can actually use, or leaders can use questions as we'll talk about reinforced values, reinforce behaviors. I mean, questions are powerful when they're used strategically. And again, as I was even writing this chapter, it reminded me, Andy, use questions strategically because as the leader of the organization or the leader of a department, we don't have to ask questions because we're supposed to have the answers, right?

(03:19):
But stepping back, here's the big picture. One of the roles of a leader is to incite curiosity in the organization, to incite curiosity and to invite curiosity. Leaders either incite curiosity or they cap curiosity. And I don't think any leader actually caps curiosity on purpose. I think it happens by accident. And one of the ways to keep that from happening is to ask questions because a question incites curiosity. But our tendency again is to walk in with an agenda and just start talking and listen to everybody and then try to come up with some collaborative answer and just move on. But if we will pause and think and leverage questions, we incite curiosity. Here's something I wrote because again, if we're not asking questions, it's going to be difficult sometimes for the people around us to ask questions because again, you're the boss, everybody's cautious.

Holly Goddard (04:12):
Yeah.

Andy Stanley (04:13):
But a question that is off limits is a limit. Any question in the organization that is off limits, and everybody listening, we've all worked in environments, I know I have twice, where I just knew there were certain topics that were off limits. There were certain questions you just didn't ask.

Holly Goddard (04:28):
You just know that.

Andy Stanley (04:29):
Yeah. It becomes part of the culture. Everybody knows and you only have to hear somebody ask one of those questions once or twice and the room goes quiet and you realize, oh, I just bumped into a sacred cow, stay away from that. But great leaders create a culture where that's just not the case because a question that is off limits is a limit. A question that is off limits is a boundary, it's a constraint, it's a frontier that can't be explored. And as we both know, just because a leader doesn't allow a question to be asked in a circle or in a meeting doesn't mean the question isn't being asked.

Holly Goddard (05:09):
No.

Andy Stanley (05:10):
It's just being asked in the halls.

Holly Goddard (05:11):
That's right. More meetings after the meetings, more grapevine talk.

Andy Stanley (05:14):
Just whispers. So if people in the organization are going to ask the question anyway, why wouldn't I want to be part of the conversation? And the way a leader determines or guarantees that they'll be part of those difficult conversation addressing the difficult questions that people are asking anyway is to incite curiosity, don't cap curiosity and allow for the bad questions, the awkward questions, the questions that disrupt the paradigm, that disrupt the culture. We don't have to be afraid of those questions and we invite those when we incite curiosity and when we lead with questions.

Holly Goddard (05:49):
Okay, this sounds like a really big deal, like a skill that we definitely need to develop, but this also sounds like something that's going to require a lot of security from the leader. So why does being curious require so much security from the leader?

Andy Stanley (06:03):
This is so strange and I experienced this. I'm sure you have as well. So here's somebody who works for me that I've been part of hiring and they ask a potentially threatening question, threatening in terms of it's a question that maybe questions a decision I've made or something we do as an organization or something that's always been a part of the organization. And immediately on the inside, I get defensive. And one of the things I've learned, it took me too long to learn this, is when I began getting defensive on the inside, that is an expression of my insecurity. That is my issue. It's not their problem. In fact, I should be grateful that they felt free in front of me to ask such a ridiculous question.

Holly Goddard (06:47):
Yeah, that's such a good reframe though. Yeah.

Andy Stanley (06:50):
But again, I have to gear down. And if I don't, my response and the emotion I bring to the response,

(06:58):
And this is so important, it doesn't just shut them down. In a meeting, it sends a signal. Certain things are off limits. Be careful what you ask. And here's again, the big picture. We want the people in the room with us to express their ideas, not suppress their ideas. And my response to a bad idea, my response to what I would consider a ridiculous or off topic question, my response to them, even though what I say may be true, it communicates something to everybody in the room. And in that moment without meaning to, I have capped curiosity. And when you cap curiosity, certain questions are off limits. And the real problem is questions organizationally are usually the pathway to the future. So why would I ever want to shut down anybody's curiosity or anybody's questions? And as the leader, what do I have to fear?

(07:57):
But my insecurity, your insecurity, the insecurity of the leaders, it gets triggered, it gets tripped. We say things, we say things with too much emotion. People are listening and we've just capped the questions. We've capped curiosity and that's a lid for the whole organization. So again, what you said earlier, it's questions, it seems like a simple topic. Questions are strategic and how we respond to questions is equally strategic. But again, even saying this is a reminder to me.

Holly Goddard (08:26):
Yes, to work on it.

Andy Stanley (08:27):
Because I get triggered by questions just like anybody does.

Holly Goddard (08:29):
Well, let's talk about that because if questions are strategic and then there's some self-regulation that we also have to do with that, what do you do? And this happens. Okay. Someone asks a loaded question or it feels like it's very agenda laden and all of a sudden, at least my inner monologue is like, I see right through you, you punk. I feel what you're talking about.

Andy Stanley (08:50):
Yeah, that's not a question. That's an agenda disguised as a question.

Holly Goddard (08:54):
So that happens sometimes and you're sitting in the meeting. So practically, how do you respond in that moment?

Andy Stanley (09:01):
This is important. Again, these are the lessons I wish I had learned earlier. I'll tell you where this happens to me. Sometimes in interviews, the interviewer has a gotcha question. It's like, oh, it's a question, but it's really an agenda. It's an accusation disguised as a question. Here's what I try to do. I just assume, even though I know better and even though I kind of see through them, I just assume this is a sincere question. So I do my best to respond to the question by extracting their motive. In fact, it's usually wrong to lay what you assume their motive is on them, right? So I just try to respond like, oh, that's an interesting question. I've never thought about that before. That's a good question. I just pretend like it's a sincere question even when I know it's not, because why not?

(09:49):
And that's disarming. You're basically kind of calling them out and you have time to think about, okay. And generally there's something good in the question. I've never thought about that before.

Holly Goddard (10:00):
So you assume the best.

Andy Stanley (10:02):
Yeah, just assume the best, answer the question and don't bristle. Don't bristle. And again, and you and I have talked about this because we've been in situations where we've faced this in the same arena, is there's nothing gained when we get emotional. There's nothing gained when we bristle. There's nothing gained when I respond to the motive behind the question or what I assume is the motive behind the question instead of just answering the question. Again, I'm the leader. Why would I be threatened by a question? And again, I'm not just responding to their question. I'm modeling for everybody else in the room and for all the other leaders in the room, how do you respond to a question that has an agenda? How do you respond to a question that is actually an accusation? And the way you do that is the leader, you just absorb it.

(10:54):
You don't defend, you don't reflect back, you just absorb. There's no lose in doing that, but there's a lot to lose if I go back at them or again, try to respond to the motive or what I assume is the motive. And in some cases, you're just wrong. Again, you've associated them with a motive that may not be their motive at all.

Holly Goddard (11:15):
Well, what's dawning on me in this moment is if you're experiencing judgment coming towards you, you don't add judgment back.

Andy Stanley (11:21):
We don't have to.

Holly Goddard (11:22):
You just absorb it.

Andy Stanley (11:23):
We don't have to. But again, you have to decide ahead of time, I'm going to absorb, I'm going to assume the best, and I'm going to respond to the information, not what I think is behind the information. And it's just better. And generally it just brings the temperature down for everybody.

Holly Goddard (11:41):
Yeah.

Andy Stanley (11:42):
But anyway.

Holly Goddard (11:43):
No, that's good. So okay, there's responding well to questions and then you call a question, you reframe it in a way that I haven't heard. You say a question is an invitation rather than an instruction. So unpack that for us and what can a question accomplish that an instruction cannot?

Andy Stanley (12:02):
Yeah. So I mean, if you think about it, that's what a question is. A question is an invitation. I'm asking you a question, I'm inviting a response. An instruction is basically, here's what I want you to do. You may have a question about my instruction, but off we go. And the other thing too, a question allows a person to maintain their agency. If I'm asking a question, you are still in control of the conversation to some extent, right? We haven't shut it down. Whereas an instruction takes away agency. Here's what I want you to do. Here's how I want you to do it. You've lost some agency. So the way this should be applied in terms of leadership is this. We should begin our meetings with lots of questions and very few instructions. Save instructions for the end because as long as I'm asking questions and getting feedback, I've allowed everybody in the circle to maintain their agency, which is a really big deal.

(12:54):
Again, I've not put a lid on something. I'm continuing to communicate my curiosity. So begin with questions, questions, questions, questions. Questions insight curiosity. Questions, insight, ideas. Save the instruction for the end because instructions, again, take away agency. So that's the idea. And again, even at home with our kids, just to remember, before we go to instructions, just start with questions because questions are strategic, you're still the parent, you still get to make the decision, you're still the director, you're not giving up anything. But the longer I can give the people around me agency before we make a decision, that's just better. And that's what questions do. They incite curiosity to keep the conversation going and everybody continues to learn. But when we're sure we know the answer, our tendency is to, okay, let's stop. Let's just move on.

Holly Goddard (13:46):
That's really good. And this takes time.

Andy Stanley (13:48):
Yeah. You should respond to your own statement, right?

Holly Goddard (13:51):
Yeah.

Andy Stanley (13:51):
Because we're like, come on.

Holly Goddard (13:54):
Yeah, let's go. Let's go.

Andy Stanley (13:55):
We got to make a decision.

Holly Goddard (13:56):
So instructions are so much faster, but this just yields such a better result.

Andy Stanley (14:00):
Much better. And you learn in the process.

Holly Goddard (14:03):
One of my favorite ideas in this chapter is that the questions we ask reveal what we value the most, which means in most cases, my team already knows what I value the most because they're listening to the things that I'm asking. And I can say something that's important, but they're listening to the things that I'm really curious about. So how would a leader be able to take inventory of the questions that they're asking?

Andy Stanley (14:27):
Yeah. Well, you've made a great statement within the question, and that is a leader should do some kind of inventory of the questions they ask. In the book, I just refer to those as our frequently asked questions. We all have frequently asked questions. Those questions asked over and over and over become instructions to the people around us. If I ask for a specific report every Monday morning when I walk in, after a while, I don't have to ask for it anymore.

Holly Goddard (14:56):
They just know.

Andy Stanley (14:57):
It's just going to be sitting there. So taking inventory, and this is strange to do, and again, all these things I learned the hard way. When I began to take inventory of the questions I ask and then had to ask myself this question, do the questions I ask the most line up with what I say is most important for the organization?

(15:17):
Because values are static. We can paint values on the wall and have them in documents and go over them at the beginning of meetings, but that's static. The questions we ask over and over and over, as you said, reveal what is most important to us. Again, think about the questions your parents ask you all the time. You realize, you can tell me -

Holly Goddard (15:36):
Who's going to be there?

Andy Stanley (15:37):
Yeah. Who's going to be there?

Holly Goddard (15:39):
Exactly.

Andy Stanley (15:39):
Right. Are their parents going to be home? After a while, you tell your friends, "Oh, there's no way I can go. Why?" Well, your parents aren't going to be there. Here's going to be there because I know as soon as I'm asking my mom -

Holly Goddard (15:50):
This is how we do it.

Andy Stanley (15:51):
My mom's going to ask those questions. Well, in the same way, when we think about what is really most important for the success of the organization and what are the questions I ask all the time, our questions are going to direct people's behaviors. Our questions are going to create habits. And if those directions and habits don't line up with what we say is most important for the organization, we're painting one thing on the wall and we're doing something else. So again, doing an evaluation of your frequently asked questions at work is so important. And then the key, because questions are strategy, to ask the question, "What are the questions I should be asking?" When you think about your values for the organization, every value that is painted on the wall or wherever the values are, every value has a potential question that can be attached.

(16:40):
And one of the things that we did years ago when we kind of moved from organizational values to organizational behaviors, and I'm doing this because we create the cube, that's right. We talked about the cube. We didn't just state the behavior, we attached a question. So the questions are dynamic. I know the answer to the question. One of our staff behaviors is replace yourself, replace yourself. Oh, that's a great idea. The question is who's coming along behind you that could potentially take your place? Oh, now I have to do something. So again, questions are dynamic. Questions move people. Questions allow people to keep their agency. And if we leverage them properly, pay attention to the ones we ask all the time, we learn something about ourselves. We learn about ourselves what the people around us already know because we keep asking those same questions. So again, this is a simple thing, but it's a powerful thing.

(17:36):
And it's one of the easiest things to lose sight of because we just start talking and nobody's going to interrupt us. We're the leader.

Holly Goddard (17:43):
Well, it's simple, but you have to determine what you value so you can ask the question with it, which takes a little bit of time and energy.

Andy Stanley (17:51):
It does. It does.

Holly Goddard (17:51):
I was thinking about a question you ask a lot. You ask a lot, how can I help? That's just something you ask as a boss, which that really sets the tone for our organization of I'm just to lean in and help you succeed.

Andy Stanley (18:03):
Well, let's talk about that because, well, one of the things that's later in the book is the power of mutual submission. Mutual submission is the most powerful relational dynamic in the world, whether it's in marriage, at home, family, work, neighborhood. Mutual submission is I'm going to bring my resources to support you and what you're doing and you're going to bring your resources to support me and what I'm doing regardless of where we are in the organization. And a single question drives all of that. And the question is, what can I do to help? So I've tried to make it a habit, and you're in the meeting, so you can call me out on this, to end one-on-ones and to end group meetings by saying, okay, now that we know what we're going to do, what can I do to help? I have more resources and access to more resources than anybody in the organization.

(18:49):
And as the leader, I'm accustomed to staff saying to me, Andy, what can we do to help? What is not as common in organizational life is for the person at the top to ask everybody else, okay, what can I do to help? And I would love to think that that question gets tagged onto meetings and one-on-ones throughout our organization. So I need to model that and I want to know the answer to that question because if I ask you to do something in a department or in the organization that you run and you're thinking, okay, I'll do that, but if I could get Andy to make one call for me to... And you're thinking, yeah, but I don't want to bother him. So at the end of the meeting I say, okay, Holly, now that we know what the game plan is, what can I do to help?

(19:37):
Well, now you have permission to say, you know what? If you could contact him before I contact him to let him know I'm good that, it's like, great, I want to know. But again, that one question, that single question is a powerful question and it drives this culture shaping dynamic of mutual submission.

Holly Goddard (19:56):
Wow, that's huge. That's a huge idea.

Andy Stanley (19:58):
And simple.

Holly Goddard (19:59):
It is simple. And I remember when you first started asking me that, I didn't really know how to respond because I wasn't used to being asked that. But what it does eventually, not only do you learn to pass it down, but you learn to think bigger because you're thinking what resources are available and how can we be more strategic? And it's like you have permission. So anyway, that's a great one that drives culture.

Andy Stanley (20:20):
One more thing on that.

Holly Goddard (20:21):
Yeah.

Andy Stanley (20:22):
I'm going to read the minds of some of the folks listening. The reason we don't want to ask that question, what can I do to help? Is we're afraid they'll have an answer and give us a homework assignment. Well, now that you're asking, here's three things you can do to help. But if you've hired well, if you're surrounded by mature people, they're going to be strategic in answering that question. And in most cases when I say, what can I do to help? Most people say, nothing, I've got this. Great. But if there's something I can do, I want to know. So don't be afraid to ask the question.

Holly Goddard (20:54):
Yeah, that's good. Don't be afraid. Okay. Well, speaking of being slightly uncomfortable, let's talk about two uncomfortable but necessary questions that you put in this chapter. And these are really gutsy questions. I mean, I think they take a lot of guts to ask and then act on, but they've really shaped our organization over the years. And just trigger warning, because if you're going to do these, you will be a little uncomfortable, but you will make the right changes. So here's the first one. The first question is, who's not keeping up? And this isn't who's doing something wrong or who's not a great person, but it's who's not keeping pace with where the organization needs to be or where we're going. So how does a leader know when it's time to stop accommodating and to make that change?

Andy Stanley (21:41):
Well, to back up a little bit, simply asking the question generally makes the answer crystal clear, and it's why we don't like to ask the question. And again, we love the people we work with. We appreciate the people we've worked with. In some cases, we are why they're in the organization. So to ask every once in a while, okay, who's not keeping up? It's a painful question. It has led that question, and one we'll talk about next time in the next episode, that question, because it's related to another question, have brought terrifying clarity to staff changes that we've needed to make.

(22:21):
But again, as the leader, once I know who's not keeping up, I have to ask myself the question, what am I most committed to? And leaders, we've talked about this before, we have to be more committed to the success of the organization than we are committed to any individual in the organization, which sounds terrible. But as our listeners think about the good their organizations are doing in the marketplace or through their nonprofit, what they're doing is so important, they dare not allow any single individual to undermine the success of the important work they're doing. So this is an important question. Who's not keeping up? And again, where you ask it's important. Who you ask it with is important. But when there's some consensus, and again, to your point, they've not done anything wrong. They're just not going to do anything great.

(23:11):
And in some cases, and the most difficult, difficult decision for me in terms of personnel was someone who was extraordinarily helpful in the early days, and this person just wasn't keeping up. And the people who were following this individual were kind of being patient, doing a little bit of a workaround, that became evident. I tried not to look. It's going to get better.

Holly Goddard (23:35):
Right.

Andy Stanley (23:36):
Coach, coach.

Holly Goddard (23:36):
Maybe this will resolve on its own.

Andy Stanley (23:37):
Yeah. Coach, coach, coach, coach. And then you realize, okay, we have to make a hard decision. So again, the power of questions, who's not keeping up? And I would imagine in our podcast audience, somebody's like,

Holly Goddard (23:51):
Oh no.

Andy Stanley (23:52):
Yeah. Oh no.

Holly Goddard (23:53):
Well, you've asked me in a one-on-one a version of that before of would you hire this person again? And I don't know if you remember how I responded, but I said, I don't want to respond because I know I'm going to have to do something about this. It was such a sinking feeling, but I think what you've taught me is that accommodating, it dishonors everybody else. And I don't want to be that kind of leader.

Andy Stanley (24:16):
Yeah. Years ago, Jim Collins, and I believe it was Good to Great, introduced these two questions that many of us ever since kept front and center. I wrote them in my notes. He wrote, "You asked these two questions. Would I hire this person again?" To the point you just made. And the second question is this one. If this person resigned, would you be secretly relieved?

Holly Goddard (24:38):
I know.

Andy Stanley (24:39):
It's so clear.

Holly Goddard (24:39):
Well, you know immediately.

Andy Stanley (24:40):
Right. But that's the power of a question.

Holly Goddard (24:44):
No, that's helpful but hard. Okay. So the second one is a little bit better. All right. The second one is who should be at the table? And you say this, you say, "Typically, org charts rather than job descriptions determine who gets the seat at which table, and that's a mistake." Okay. Why is that the wrong way to think about it?

Andy Stanley (25:03):
Well, again, there aren't many instances in which the org chart is our friend. It's necessary. You have to have an organizational chart for accountability and reporting and all those things. But when it comes to decision making, you need to have the right people in the room. And so this is the question that leaders need to ask. As we think about what we're contemplating, trying to decide, strategic planning, whatever it might be, as I think not just in terms of my direct reports or the directors or the C-suite, but in terms of the people in this organization, who are the best people to have in the room? And am I willing to hurt some feelings by not inviting the regular folks, the regular suspects to skip two or three levels down in the organization to make sure the right people are in the room for the conversation? So this is just another question that underscores the fact that questions are strategy. So asking the question, okay, who needs to be in the room?

(25:55):
Are the right people in the room? Am I so married to the org chart that it's interfering with decision-making in the organization? And here's the thing, and we've tried to model this through the years. When you break up that expectation and that paradigm, over time, people grow accustomed to, "Oh, I'm not being overlooked. I'm not being dismissed. This is just what we do here." And one of the easiest ways to introduce this to an organization is when a director is not going to be able to attend a meeting, you ask the director to send somebody in their place to represent them. This does two things. It introduces a new face into a meeting, which is always helpful, fresh eyes, fresh perspective, all of that. And it honors that person, and it just reminds everybody we're not locked into a list of names based on the org chart in terms of who gets to sit in the room.

(26:51):
So again, who needs to be at the table based on what we're talking about today,

Holly Goddard (26:56):
That's all I've ever experienced in this organization, so I've never considered it a withdrawal because it was always just part of our culture. And it's so honoring to other people who are down on the ground doing the things who may have perspectives that we don't have because we're just not in the trenches at some level. So I think it makes a culture much stronger, but I would imagine if you're starting it from zero, that's a little challenging.

Andy Stanley (27:21):
And let's be honest too. If you hire well and people are secure, in most cases, they're happy not to have to attend another meeting. Please. Take her. Take him. Look, I'll sit this one out. I've been to enough meetings this week, so you're not hurting my feelings.

Holly Goddard (27:39):
That's right. Yeah, let's be honest about that.

Andy Stanley (27:40):
He just gave me an hour and a half, right?

Holly Goddard (27:41):
That's so good. Well, Andy, as we wrap up, why don't you give a charge to our audience? What is one thing that they could put into practice this week?

Andy Stanley (27:50):
Based on this content?

Holly Goddard (27:52):
Yeah.

Andy Stanley (27:52):
Okay. Maybe more than one. A good place to start is to ask yourself, do I incite and invite curiosity or do I have a tendency with my response to questions to cap curiosity? And if you really want to know the answer to that question, ask somebody who has an opportunity to watch you lead a team discussion. A second application, I know you just asked for one, Holly, is this, is pay attention. This is so important. Pay attention to your internal and external response when someone suggests a bad or misguided idea. Your response to a bad idea may determine whether or not someone with a good idea has the courage to speak up. Last thing, as soon as you're finished listening or watching, I want you to write down or maybe just record in a voice memo one question you could begin asking that underscores a staff behavior critical to the success of your organization because questions are strategy, questions are a tool, so use them.

(28:57):
And questions are your friend, embrace them because that's what great leaders do.

Holly Goddard (29:04):
That's so helpful. Yeah, questions are so powerful. And next time we're going to talk about three specific questions that we can ask as a leader, so I'm looking forward to that one. And to you, our audience, thanks so much for joining us. Before you go, take a minute to subscribe wherever you access this content. By subscribing, you help us grow the audience, which allows us to keep bringing you great content to help you go further faster. And be sure to visit andystanley.com where you can download the leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of this episode plus questions for reflection or group discussion. Well, we will see you next time right here on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.