Summary
Good leadership requires confidence and deep understanding.
When I was a kid, I fell off my bike over and over again. My dad tried to help me learn, but my frustration grew as the scrapes and bruises added up.
I remember him picking me up off the ground one day and saying, “Don’t panic once you get moving. Just trust that you’re going to stay upright and you will.”
That lesson helped, and not long after, I was cruising around on my bike like a pro.
Over time, though, I got too comfortable. I started trying tricks and jumps before I was ready, and once again got my share of scraped-up knees and elbows.
Learning to ride took confidence. Trying tricks required a better understanding of my limits.
Leadership asks us to make a similar judgment. We need confidence in what we know and a willingness to recognize where our understanding ends.
Knowing vs. Not Knowing
Of course, you need expertise to lead at work. You should have a deep knowledge of your company, your industry, and your organization’s values.
Expertise helps you lead. But it can also make it easy to mistake an assumption for a fact, especially when you’re trying to understand another person.
When you assume you already understand why someone is struggling, you can act confidently and still address the wrong problem.
You shouldn’t assume you know:
- What people think and feel
- The roadblocks that keep people from performing well
- Which working relationships help people succeed or make their jobs harder
- People’s ideas about strategy, vision, and execution
The Inquiring Mindset
Good leadership requires replacing assumptions with questions.
This leads us to the I in the POINT Framework: Inquiring.
Inquiring means building the habit of asking thoughtful questions and staying open to answers that challenge what you thought you knew.
Some of my favorite questions are:
- What, if anything, is in your way right now?
- How does your work connect to our company’s vision, and where is that connection unclear?
- How do you see our company values in practice? Is there any disconnect?
- How could we better help our clients?
- How could we better help each other?
- If everything went perfectly in your career, what would that look like in three years?
These answers can help you understand where someone needs support, where your direction is unclear, and where a good idea has gone unheard. Next week, we’ll explore how to turn that understanding into useful action.
Inquiring works best when people believe you care about them and see you making time to lead. That’s why it builds on the first two components of POINT: People First and On-Purpose. You can revisit those posts here and here.
Before your next conversation, consider: What have I assumed about this person that I haven’t actually asked?
