Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions By Knowing What To Ask

By: Michael Marquardt

Jossey-Bass

Before interviewing 22 specific leaders around the world, Marquardt 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.” Additionally, 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 that 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 22 leaders interviewed.
Of special interest to many readers 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 pushing for closure and results. [They] gather and share information while ideas are evolving.” They also make certain that others do so.

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