Best Leaders Question Everything - By Hal Gregersen

When stakes are high, it can be difficult for leaders, especially senior ones new to their roles, to pause before acting. Here’s advice for how to give yourself time to reflect and lead with questions:

Create a questioning ecosystem through diverse teams

Successful leadership isn’t just about the leader, it’s about the team. For initiatives to take hold, leaders must purposefully create diverse teams internally while seeking unique perspectives externally, whether from business partners or customers.

To gain perspective on the business from multiple angles, one should spent considerable time talking with customers and team members to hear from them what worked and what didn’t. Collecting first-hand information proved far more likely to provoke valuable new questions than pre-existing second hand information scattered around.

Stay curious

Why are we doing it that way? Curiosity shouldn’t end when you find one solution to a problem. Leaders must constantly explore new ideas themselves, seek out new thinking from those around them and create partnerships. Seeking serendipitous connections across ideas and people brings new opportunity. Exploring this interconnectivity between seemingly unrelated areas plays an important role in any leadership.

Challenge the status quo

Sometimes asking uncomfortable questions means making tough decisions about an existing strategy or abandoning it all together. Every leader should value the power of experimentation, even if it means starting over.

While it’s both empowering and daunting, starting from scratch opens up an incredible amount of questions, allowing leaders to step back and look at the big picture. Don’t lose the spirit that keeps entrepreneurs seeking change rather than waiting to adapt to change. Instead of sticking with the status quo, every leader should take the right, measured risks.

Leaders should question everything, surround themselves with diverse teams and capitalize on opportunities to hear and experiment with new ideas. They give themselves time to surface divergent thoughts and catalytic questions that ultimately lead to smarter business decisions.