Stop Answering and Start Asking: The Power of Questions

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Transcript

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The quality of your leadership is directly connected to the quality of the questions that you ask. Have you ever been told that as a senior living leader? I never really was, but most leaders think their job is to have the answers. I know I did. I know I still do sometimes. But what I'm realizing now is the best leaders, the one who transforms teams, who builds the culture and creates the influence. Know the real power isn't in having all the answers. It's in the questions that we ask. Because questions do something that answers never can they open space. They invite ownership, they spark thinking, and they build trust. John Maxwell says, good leaders ask great questions. I take it a step further. Great leaders ask transformational questions. The kind that don't just fix a problem, they grow a person. And that's where the real shift happens. That's where the shift happened. For me. Control based leadership gives answers, but influence based leadership asks questions, control keeps you the center of the story. And questions pull others into the center of their own growth. So if you're tired of being the community fire extinguisher, if you're constantly jumping in to solve everyone's problems, if you find yourself thinking, why can't anyone just take initiative? Or if I hear my name one more time. It is time to stop answering and to start asking questions because when we lead with the right questions, we stop managing behavior and we start multiplying belief. So let's get into this episode where we explore How we can change from being the person who solves every problem to the person who grows people to solve their own problems. It is important to know that you are only as good as the people you are around, period. And as an executive director, you're around your leadership team an awful lot. You're also around your care team and your maintenance team and your culinary team as well. So if you are the sum of the people that you hang around. I think that we wanna make sure who we're hanging around are good people, good eggs, and we wanna make sure that we as the leader, are pouring into them and making them grow into better versions of themselves that can solve more problems. The more that your leaders can solve, the more freedom that you have, the more leaders can anticipate problems and avoid those problems becoming a reality, the more freedom they're gonna have. And a lot of time I hear what most leaders want, or more freedom, I know as a leader, I had young kids and so there were times that I had to hear my name so many times at home and at work, and I would just get that feeling like if I hear my name one more time. Did that happen to you? Because I don't want to feel totally alone in that little resentment that I had at the time, I did tell somebody, don't say my name. Ask your question. that's just how bad it got one time. I'm sorry if that's too real, I know I realized at some point now I can't give to you the point that the realization came, but I realized that me fixing everything and trying to answer every question and trying to solve every problem was going to keep me having to be involved in everything. And I can't be involved in everything. The majority of my time was working, at a community that was 124 apartments, 64 memory care, 60 assisted living, 110 associates, potentially 250 residents that, 250 family members that would want to talk to me at any given point, and then trying to stay on top of home life as well. I am one person and I cannot solve every problem, but I realized if I can have and empower and allow my team to solve problems with them, understanding what success look like to me based on the regulations, based on policy and procedures, based on my own customer service expectations, then my team will grow. And in growing in their role, they will create more freedom. They will be feeling more empowered and leadership and trust throughout the community can scale and not just stay with me. I knew that as a leader, as an executive director of a community, if family members trusted me, that trust would filter down to my managers. That was my responsibility. I knew that. But in order for family members to trust me, it had to be available to them and residents and associates. I can't be available if I'm busy solving everyone's problems, and so I needed to let go and grow my team being the first to respond. The fixer, the solver, the one everyone counted on, I loved it. I like being needed to some degree. It filled a lot of silent wounds that, I didn't know existed at the time. Feeling needed, feeling powerful to solve problems, and being someone's superhero is, for a lack of better words, addicting. I loved it. I like solving problems, but the problem is I began to want more than just being needed. I couldn't grow as a person and as a leader because I was containing myself as being needed for every problem. I realized that every time I answered a question someone else could solve, I took away a chance for them to grow and a chance for me to grow in my leadership impact because leadership isn't doing everything. Leadership is empowering people to be able to do the thing, solve the problem, make the decision based on the big picture for the community. When we are solving every problem and becoming the fire extinguisher for everything, we're not leading. Okay. I was training people unintentionally to bring problems to me to get approval from me to solve the problem instead of coming to me with solutions. Now, I had some great team members that would bring me solutions innately, like I didn't ask for it. They would just bring it to me and then we would work it out, and then I would be like, okay. And I think I was intentionally training people to do that when I should have released them sooner to solve the problem and then come to me and those natural leaders who are now executive directors and um, sales directors with administrators license, and soon to be administrators, they did that. Innately because they're leaders, because they had the experience and other people needed that push from me that eventually I gave them. It's called confidence. They need you to ask them questions and to give them the opportunity to solve problems, and if they don't do it right, a safe space to say, what did we learn here? What did we not know when we solved these problems? What do we need to look for next time when this happens? One of the great things about working in senior living is a lot of the same problems happen in different forms and different circumstances because we're serving the same customer avatar. And so over time, and if you can identify the pattern recognition, you can see. The steps that are leading to this problem happening over and over again. And so if you can teach leaders how to see those patterns, solve those problems in advance before they become big problems, we're building confidence, we're building trust, and that's really important. So how do we go from a first responder? Really to a coach and I will say that now who I am today, all the different investments I have made in myself from, different coaches that I have invested in. For me, I understand the power of questions because the coaching programs completely changed the trajectory of my life. And a lot of it were questions that were asked of me. They didn't solve my problems. They asked me questions. They asked me questions like, why are you talk like yourself to yourself like that? Why are you so hard on that? And these are things that I wasn't aware of for me, or I wasn't aware that it was not healthy. If we're too harsh to ourselves, it's not healthy. Eventually that's gonna come out and it's going to project onto other people. But I realized over the last three years of investments in my leadership growth and my business professional growth and my confidence growth, that the best leaders ask questions before they answer. In some ways, a younger, more inexperienced, immature in leadership version of myself thought that questions were a bit passive aggressive. Now questions can be passive aggressive. That's why it's important for you to understand your tone and what your. In what you're trying to, the outcome that you're trying to give, because questions can be very passive aggressive, but you can set the nature of the meeting and you can say, before I answer, I wanna ask some questions so we can grow through this process together. We've set the tone of the meeting. Somebody's bringing you a problem, and you can say to them, I'm gonna ask you some questions so we can get to the answer together. And then you can ask them leading questions instead of saying, let me fix that for you. It's what have you already tried? If I weren't here, how would you handle it? Or what do you think that we should do? We feel the need to solve the problems because that's our identity. Like I described earlier, the pressure of having to solve all the problems and most importantly, the time we don't have the time. Time is like our biggest crutch. We don't have the time to do this. We don't have the time to invest in the growth. I want you to understand something. If you don't have the time today, you will never have the time. The short term investment of pouring into your leadership team and watching them grow long term will give you the time that you are so desperately seeking, I promise you. where are you? Let me ask you this question and answer it to yourself or out loud. Where are you? The first to respond and solve problems. Is there a particular department in your community or your company that you are so quick to solve problems without asking questions of the leader? Do you believe in that leader? Do you see the potential in that leader? Are you taking away the opportunity to grow them? So I want you to be real reflective on who am I solving problems for all the time, and who am I allowing to solve their own problems and what's the difference? And if it's everybody's problems, then we got some work to do. Okay? So this week. Say this, write this. I will pause instead of fix, and I will ask instead of answer, ask, what have you already tried? What's the next step here? What do we need to know to make the best solution to this problem? That's a good question. What do I need to know? Because sometimes we try to solve problems without all of the facts. So are you asking the right questions? This is where we wanna make sure that we get to the point where it's not so passive aggressive. It is intentional because being intentional is how you grow. Asking questions work because it builds team confidence. It surfaces creativity, like creative problem solving is a lot of fun, but you can't get creative problem solving if you don't know all the facts and you don't feel safe enough to experiment to figure out what would be a creative solution. And when your people grow because you're asking them questions, it reduces your burnout and it empowers them because they see the impact that they're making. A lot of our burnout comes from not seeing the impact our work is giving us, which means that we're trying to do the same thing over and over again, and we're seeing no results. But if we pour into and grow into our team. Then we're gonna start seeing results very quickly because it's the teamwork that will multiply the outcomes. You gotta get them bought in first, and questions is a good way to do that. So information is power. Yes. Know what we need to know, what do we not know, but only when it's shared. And so it's really important to know, are we asking the right questions? Think of your leadership. As Google. But you are the Google search engine and your managers, your leaders, maybe even some, high potential leaders in frontline teams are coming to you asking questions. It's only useful if people are asking good questions. If somebody's coming to you and they have a problem and they want your opinion, a good clarifying question is going to be, what does success look like here? What does success look like to you? When we solve this problem, do we know what the family wants in this? I like to talk about the win-win quadrant a lot. What is the win for the family? What is the win for the community? What is the win for you? what does success really look like? A good coaching question is going to be, what's the real challenge here for you? This coaching question really gets somebody thinking, is it really a problem or what's the real problem? Because let's face it. The problems are not always the ones that we think they are. And so a good coaching question really asks the person who's bringing you the problem, what is the real problem? And walking through that, and then an empowering question is, how would you lead this if I wasn't here? How would you solve this question if I wasn't here? What would great look like for you next week? What would great look like for you for the rest of the day? What does good look like? Solving this problem today, the psychology behind questions is that questions. Activate the prefrontal cortex. It creates ownership, not obedience. I had an executive director recently. Ask me about education and training the team and how she wants her team to want training and educating and use what they've learned and get them to buy in. And I said to her, you need to ask more questions rather than fill them with knowledge and information. Because questions really do create ownership, and it can be something as simple as, did you see how happy that resident was after you washed her hair? Do you see the impact of giving them or this particular resident, a fried egg over a scrambled egg, a choice? They can tie their own work into the impact that they see, and then it buys ownership. There's a connection because sometimes people don't see what's holding them back until you bring it to light. Why are you feeling uncomfortable here? What is preventing you from trying this? When we ask those types of reflective questions, psychology comes in and all of a sudden we do realize it's not defiance or disobedience. It really is fear of judgment, fear of failure, fear of rejection, and we can create this space where people can say, I'm scared to fail. I'm scared to let you down. And then that emotional impact. Is when people feel seen and heard and valued. A lot of people put these defenses up or these roadblocks because they are afraid and we don't know that, and they don't know that until they're confronted with it in a powerfully safe, growth way. And that's what questions can do if you use them appropriately. Questions can shift the dynamic from I lead you and you follow me to we're gonna grow together and it's safe to know that I don't know is an appropriate answer as long as you have the willingness to go find the answer and bring it back to me. Questions provide. That space and in a cheesy way, you know, giving an answer is like handing someone a fish. But asking a question is like teaching them to fish and then watching them teach others. That's empowering. That's truly leading from an influential way. And the three types of powerful questions are clarifying, coaching and empowering questions, not passive aggressively, but a way to promote growth, confidence, and connection with your team. So how do we start implementing a question led leadership style, which is what I like to call influence based leadership? I think it's really important for you to understand, for me to understand, or to remind myself constantly that answers solve a moment. So when I go to give an answer to be that fire extinguisher to solve everyone's problems, I'm solving a moment and I'm moving on to the next problem. Questions. Develop a leader who can solve their own problems and then report back to you the problem, the solution, and the outcome. Just imagine. Someone solving a problem, seeing a problem, solving a problem, assessing the outcome, and bringing all of that to you. You may have that now, but if you don't, it's possible. It requires you to create a growth environment and to ask questions that will breed ownership, right? So you have to shift your habits. And your mindset from, I don't want to be needed all the time. I want to empower people where we can spread the good dopamine hits of solving problems and trust being baked into our daily operations inside of a community. So try this framework for you to ask. More and better questions to your team. It's ask, listen, reflect, and empower. So you wanna ask one great question per meeting, so of your standup and your daily all associate meeting, and wanna ask a great question that makes people think and makes people grow and it create a safe space to have them answer. So everybody can learn from the responses. Or if you ask one great question and everybody answers this thing about how much growth and perspective is in that room perspective is a gift. And that's what you're giving your leaders when you ask them a question, they respond and then you respond back. So ask one great question per meeting growth question. Listen, practice silent pauses before asking. I think it's important. I have been uncomfortable with pauses, too long of pauses As I have grown in my speaking, I realize that pause can feel a little uncomfortable and I'm forcing myself to lean into the pause. So ask a question and then pause. And let them feel safe in that pause and then wait for them to respond because we want them to feel that urgency is not important. It doesn't have to be right away. a thorough answer is more important than a quick answer. Reflect, it's like that power of summarization. Repeat back what you hear. What I'm hearing you say is. Tell me if I'm correct, but I heard you say this when you reflect back what they're saying, it's really powerful because you may be able to say it in a summary better than what they said it, and yet they feel empowered because of the way you said it. I'll give you an example. I was talking to a friend. And I, was making some comments about some visions and some goals and different things that I want. And it was probably, not as fluent and powerful as I wanted it to be. But when she reflected back to me, she summarized what I said to her. She summarized it to me. I was like, wow, did I say that? That sounds so good. And all of a sudden my shoulders got. Up a little higher and I set up a little taller and I was like, wow, that's good. And that came from me. It didn't necessarily sound the way she said it, but the way she said it made me sound good and feel good. And that's the power of that, reflecting that summarization, and then empower. Once you get through the conversation, you ask something like, what would you like to do next? Did you feel good about this? What are you gonna take out of this conversation moving forward? let's just talk about this was a really bad situation. We solved it, we're better for it. Now let's ask what did we learn from this and how are we going to implement what we learned? Those are powerful, empowering questions, and it gives them ownership to prevent the problem from happening again. And to take what they learned and empower other people to do the same thing. So that framework, ask one great question per meeting. Listen, practice the pause, be comfortable with it. Reflect back that power of summarization and empower people. What would you like to do next? What did you learn? How are you going to implement it in the next phase? Questions, strengthen emotional intelligence. It builds a shared responsibility. We own it together, period. That's a growth environment where we own it together, where we learn from the things that don't go right and we gain experience and knowledge to move forward together in a better way. And actually it multiplies. Leadership across the team. If we know that we can grow through what we go through, because we're asking questions all the time, we're creating this growth environment, this growth culture, then we are making a difference. You are creating more freedom for you and your team. You're reducing the burnout, and you're realizing that your worth isn't in your outcomes. It's the process of getting better and we can expect things to not go right and we can expect to learn from them and grow for them because we're setting the tone with asking questions. Being a coach leader is how you increase the influence in your community, and I think that coaching can sometimes get a bad rap. But here's what I want you to think about from a coach perspective. You're gonna communicate, it's an acronym, communicate share observations respectfully. You're going to observe, notice what's not working and what is working, and then you're going to act, right? COA, communicate, observe, and act. Collaborate together, invite your team to the conversation. A conversation is only a conversation if we're asking questions back and forth and talking to each other in a very respectful and growth oriented way. And we're gonna honor the wins. Wins come after every loss. We learn something from every loss that we have. So acknowledge the wins, the big and small, the wins that are wrapped up in bigger wins, and the wins that are learned from the hard lesson of losing or failure, right? We have to acknowledge the effort and the contributions and build trust and goodwill. So ask questions. Great leadership isn't built on control. It's built on questions, which to me equals influence because you're asking people to own it, obviously, depending on your tone. So if you want your influence to grow, start asking more and answering less, which is certainly harder than it sounds for some of us who like to be needed, who like to be in control. But who understand that freedom and empowering is the way of the future successful senior living leader. So think about these three questions for you. Where am I the first responder? When I should be the coach? Where am I the first responder, when I should be the coach? That's inspired by Joseph Cope, the empathy guy himself. What coaching questions can I use this week instead of a quick fix? And how would my culture shift if I used influence rather than answers? Powerful questions, power reflection moments for you. Thank you for your time today. We are going to be talking about questions, for the next couple episodes because if you want to hire influential people for your management positions, the next area of questions that we're gonna talk about is how to find them the appropriate answers, questions to ask for interviews and hiring influential and growth oriented people. So you're gonna wanna stay. Tuned for that episode next week. Thank you for your time. Your time is very valuable. Again, always. I'm opening up my new leadership coaching, cohort called the ED Launch Lab. Confidence Over Chaos and a Leadership Accelerator for Leaders is coming soon and the Executive Director Playbook course is available now. Thank you for your support and as always, I am taking one-on-one clients. Because coaching changed my life and it can certainly change yours, and I would love to be a part of your growth journey. As always, aspire for more for you. When you own your story, you can create your future. Have a great rest of your day.