KNOWING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS TO ASK

Early on in your career, you will probably feel the need to know the answers most of the time. Your boss asks you something about whatever you're working on, and you are expected to give him the information. In fact, as the junior member of the team, you can expect to spend 99 percent of your time coming up with the answers to whatever the boss asks. While you are in the cube, it's not your job to ask what the strategy is going to be in 2020. You are working in the trenches. Later on, if you are really good, you will begin to ask a few questions now and then. But when you start out, your focus is usually on getting the right answers.

As you become a leader, you will shift from knowing the right answers to asking the right questions. As your view of the organization broadens holistically, you cannot possibly come up with in-depth, detailed answers the way you would expect of someone who is working in a particular operation or function. Instead, to be an effective leader, you need to ask the right questions to gather the data you require to make the best decisions. Once you have asked what you think is a key question, your expectation is that the team member should know the answer or be able to obtain at least a portion of the information quickly. If he is not, then you know that you have the wrong person in the job.

As the leader, you are not going to run someone's division or function for her, but you can assess whether the strategy is reasonable, whether the right people are involved, and whether the company is in a competitive position operationally. That's why it is so important for senior leaders to be actively involved in management. As a leader, you can view the business from ten thousand feet, but when necessary you need to be able to dive into the details. When your teammates know that you, as the leader, are capable of going deep, they are never going to try to “wing it” or just blow something past you.

When I was the CEO, there were times I would zero in on whether someone who appeared to be winging it had the faintest idea of what he was talking about. For example, let's say that as the CEO I noticed that the euro had gone from $1.58 to $1.27. If I asked someone in finance for an assessment of the impact on the business and the response was something totally absurd, I knew it was time to zoom in from my overview to drill deep with questions. If the answers still weren't there, I would know I had the wrong person in the job.