← Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Great Questions
00:30:01
The right question at the right time can change everything. If you want to become a better leader, ask better questions. In this episode, Craig shares practical strategies he uses to ask the right questions.
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Craig Groeschel
I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful leadership tools that is strategic, impactful, deeply relational. Getting it right can transform your leadership. Getting it wrong is guaranteed to limit your leadership. Today we're talking about one of the most underrated leadership skills. We're going to talk about how to ask better questions. Because the right question at the right time can change everything. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast where our mission is to help you become a leader that people love to follow. If you're new to our leadership community, I wanna welcome you. We drop a new episode on the first Thursday of every month. And so if you have not subscribed, let me encourage you to hit subscribe wherever you consume this content. And please, please, please make sure you're getting the Leader Guide. The Leader Guide is packed with valuable information, summaries, questions, information to help you grow in your leadership. To help you go over with your team, go to Life Church LeaderShipPodcast. Life ChurchLeaderShipPodcast. We'll send you the free Leader Guide with the release of every single episode. And hey, I love hearing from you. Those of you on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you can comment, comment anytime. If you have questions, ask them. And I would love to know where you're listening from or where you're watching from. Just type that in the comment sections. And then anytime you post on social media, it means the world to me. Tag me and my team may repost you. We wanna work hard to invite others to be in our community. Let's dive into new content today. This is part one of a two part leadership teaching and we're talking about how to ask better questions. What do we know about most leaders? Most leaders are obsessed with having the right answers, right? But we have to acknowledge that you'll never get the right answers without asking the right questions. What's interesting is that I'm really honored to have done Leadership Q&As at different places around the world. And every time we do a Q and A, people ask some version of about the same 12 or 15 questions. I mean, over and over and over and over again they're gonna ask, tell me about your schedule. How do you delegate? How do you stay mentally healthy? How do you develop a great culture? How do you increase the vision? How do you appropriately allocate resources? How do you stay motiv? How do you handle criticism? How do you deal with conflict? How do you not grow crazy leading for years and years? And we get a version of those over and over and over again. In all my years of doing Q&As, I don't remember anyone ever asking, how do you ask better leadership questions? How do you ask questions to get really the deep and the best answers? And people should ask that because it's so, so, so important. And if you wonder, like, why should we focus on leadership questions? I'll tell you why. Because your leadership potential will never exceed the quality of the questions that you ask. If you want stronger relationships, better outcomes, and to make a bigger impact, ask better questions. The quality of the questions that you ask determine the quality of the information that you get. In many ways, the potential impact of your leadership is based on the quality of the questions that you ask. So what we're going to do is we're going to get very, very practical. We're going to talk about the why, the how and the what. In other words, like, why, why do you want to ask more questions like why do you want to shut your face and listen more than you talk? Because you need to do that and so do I. And then we're gonna talk about how do you do it? Like, how do you ask questions to get the most honest, helpful answers? Because different types of questions are gonna create different types of answers. And then what specifically do you wanna know? If you wanna make a bigger difference and to grow in your leadership, what type of information do you want to know from your team to help you grow in your impact? So let's talk with the why. And this is relatively obvious, but why do you wanna ask questions? And. And we're going to talk about three reasons. One is very, very obvious. Two, not as obvious to some leaders. Three reasons you want to ask questions. Number one, to gain knowledge and understanding. That's pretty obvious. We want to know more. Number two, you want to ask questions to develop deeper and stronger relationships. Number three, you want to ask questions to help others grow and gain insight. Let's talk about them. The first one is, is relatively obvious. You're going to ask questions because you need to know information. You want to figure out what's going on. Now, you've probably heard it said, you don't know what you don't know. People say that all the time. I'm going to add a little bit to it and tell you this. You don't know way more than you know you don't know. I'm not even sure I said that. Right. But there's so much more about leadership and about people and about what's going on in your organization that you don't even know that you don't even know. And this idea is closely related to the Dunning Kruger effect. If you've never studied the Dunning Kruger effect, please do. We've created a short summary in the leader guide. And so if you get the leader guide, we'll put some information in there. But essentially it's a cognitive bias. And you see it on two extremes. People with low competence tend to overestimate their ability. In other words, you've got someone that's not really good at something. You say, how good are you? And they say, like, I'm a nine at this. They think they're really good. And you're like, yeah, you're a 9. But the scale goes from 1 to 100 because they really don't know. They don't know. And then on the other side, there's people that are highly competent and they underestimate their expertise. They're so good at things that it's just intuitive to them, and they really have no idea how special their gifts are. I want to focus on the first end, and that is this, that you don't know what you don't know. And as a leader, I promise you that you're going to have to work really, really hard and then harder and then even harder to discover what you don't know. And in most cases, whenever you're really confident, the more confident that you are that you're right, the more you're vulnerable to being wrong. And this was really like, in the first season of my leadership. I just remember in my 20s and early 30s thinking I knew a lot, and I was pretty sure I was right, and I had no idea what I didn't know. And I had to work really, really hard to learn where I was blind what was going on that I didn't understand. And really there were, like, levels of leadership understanding that I'd yet to even. I hadn't even entered a room yet. And so if you're like most of us, and if you're like me, when you don't know something, you're often hesitant to ask because I'll tell you me, like, I don't want to look dumb. I'm kind of insecure, so I don't want to appear weak. And if you're anything like that, when you don't know something, you may not ask. So I want to remind you this is really, really important. Asking questions isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of wisdom. Asking questions doesn't mean you're dumb. It means you're smart. And not only when you ask questions, not only will you grow, but you actually model humility and teachability to your team. So if you're the boss and you're in there asking questions, you're like, well, if she can ask questions, then I can as well. And forgive me for the simplicity about what I'm about to say, but this is so, so, so important. And mark this down. Your ability to grow reflects your willingness to learn. What you don't ask, you won't know, and what you don't know, you can't grow. Let me say it again. Your ability to grow reflects your willingness to learn. When you don't ask, you won't know. And what you don't know, you can't grow. So why do you ask questions? Well, number one, to gain knowledge and understanding. Pretty obvious. Number two, some people don't think about this, but you ask questions to develop deeper and stronger relationships. In other words, if you want to connect deeply with the people that you serve with, you want to ask intentional questions, not just organizational questions, but also personal questions. Why? Because whenever people feel heard, they feel valued, and you want to show that you care about them. And chances are, almost every one of you listening or watching right now, you've probably worked for someone that didn't seem to care about you, right? And why is it that you didn't think that they cared? Well, likely they didn't ask anything, and if they did, they probably didn't seem to listen, they didn't seem to care. And, you know, it's really hard to give your best to someone that doesn't care about you. And so if you don't ask your team members question and if you don't listen to what they say, essentially what you're doing is you're communicating to your team that their insights, their ideas, their opinions don't really matter to you. And what you're doing unintentionally is you're training them not to tell you the truth. And instead, what you're doing is you're training them to tell you what they think you want to hear. And the moment you do that, that is the beginning of the end. You can't go anywhere with people that won't be honest with you and tell you the truth and tell you the things that you need to hear. I like what Andy Stanley says. He says leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. Boom. Drop the mic on that, right? You want to ask questions to show that you Care and to learn about people. So, number one, you ask questions to gain knowledge and understanding. Two, yes questions to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships. The third thing a lot of leaders don't follow. Think about this. But you also ask questions to help others grow and gain insight, to help others grow and to get better. And this is an underutilized tool. There are times when you're asking questions not just to find out information, but you're asking questions to help others discover information or get answers for themselves. You're asking to help them see something new and to help them learn and grow. If you've ever been to a good counselor, counselors specialize in this technique. A good counselor knows that if he or she tells you a truth, it doesn't change much. What a good counselor wants to do is they want to guide you to discover the truth yourself. And my counselor would do this, and it would drive me crazy. I'd be like, just cut to the chase. Just tell me. Like, no, yeah, I need you to discover it. And so you don't want to tell them how to change their thinking. You don't want to tell them how to change their approach. What you want to do is you want to ask questions and help them see, oh, okay, this is a better way to think, or this is a better way to approach that. Now, when you're using questions to coach someone, you're guiding them with questions. Remember, the best leaders don't just ask questions to get answers. They ask questions to get people thinking. You're not just using it to say, hey, I want information from you, but you're also asking to get people thinking and to discover information for themselves. Now, as a side note, I'll talk to you parents. This is a great tool in parenting. And one of the things I learned raising six kids that are now grown is it's not always wise to ask your kids, like, hey, what are you struggling with? What problems are you facing? When a parent asks a kid that, the kid often gets defensive. What I found is a better question is to say, hey, tell me how your friends are doing. What are your friends going through? And I've noticed this is like, our kids don't mind talking about their friends. They just don't want to talk about themselves. And so they'll often talk about their friends struggles. And when they do, mom or dad, they say, oh, you know, my buddy's dealing with porn, or he's dealing drugs, or he's depressed or he's suicidal, whatever. Don't freak out, don't lecture Your kid don't say you're not allowed to hang out with that person anymore. Listen with no judgment and also with compassion. And you say back to your kid like, you know, that's gotta be difficult, that's gotta be painful. You want to keep your kid talking, you want to keep the lines of communication open. And then once they tell you something, a really good question to ask is, well, what would you suggest that your friend does? What would you suggest they do? And what you're doing is you're helping train your child to both be honest and to think critically about a situation they may face one day and they may be facing now. So you're just asking open ended questions, you're getting the conversation going and then you're teaching your child to think. Now that was a parenting side note. Back to your team. This is really valuable to do with your team members. Whenever you're asking questions, one of the things you want to recognize you're doing is you're shifting the focus. You as a leader, so many things are about you. Like you walk in the room, you're the most important person in the room, you're going to do the talking. When you ask a question, you shift the focus from you to them. And this matters so much. Then the next level is the right questions eventually shifts the focus from you to them and then it shifts the focus from them to, to us. What you're doing is you're asking questions to bring everybody on the same side of the table and then together you're going like, okay, we're solving problems together, we're seizing opportunities together. And so you're asking questions that bring this unifying force of agreed vision and strategy. And this can be a game changer organizationally. Now, a word of caution, and I promise you this is a risk the higher you rise in leadership. In other words, you know, you get promoted or you do it longer or you're the, you're the goat, you're the one everybody listens to. Whatever. The higher you rise in leadership, the harder you have to work to ask sincere others, focused questions. You have to work at it because people are going to defer to you and you're going to start thinking you know more and you don't. And first of all, like if you get, you know, you're more important, everybody thinks you are, you start to think you know more than you do and it's stupid, but you know, you don't know, you're always a student. Secondly, if you're not careful, your questions, you'll be asking questions. And the people you're asking to, they'll actually feel like you're attacking them or you're giving orders. These are two risk. You're asking questions to your team members, and they feel like, oh, I'm on the defense. Why? Why is she asking me these questions? Or you come in asking questions and it feels like orders give you kind of an example. What you want to do is, if you're going to be asking a lot of questions, you want to work to create a climate of trust and safety. What I'll do if I've got a lot of questions for somebody, I'll typically say something like this, like, hey, I'm going to ask you some questions. And the reason is because you're really smart. I'm going to ask you questions because I truly value your insight and I love the way you think. A lot of people just see problems, but, like, you don't just see problems, you see solutions. And so if it's okay with you, would you spend a few minutes and help teach me what you see that I'm not seeing? So what I did there in something like that is I actually mean it. I'm trying to value the person, but I'm creating a climate where, like, going, oh, yeah, he's not in here to, you know, catch me. He's in here because he values me. And if you don't do this and you come in firing questions, a lot of people, they just are going to feel defensive. Like, he's asking me all these questions. I must be in trouble. Or this is another category. You'll ask a sincere question, and you know what they're going to hear. They don't hear a question. They hear a command. And this is really, really common. True story. Bobby Gruenwald is a close friend of mine, worked with me for 25 years. He's the creator of the YouVersion Bible app. There was a time when he was over new construction, so all the buildings that we'd be building. He walked into a new auditorium and they were painting it. And he came and he said, hey, like, why are you guys using this color? I thought we were going to try a different color. And he was just curious. He wasn't even sure. He's like, I think we're going to try a different one. I wasn't sure. And so he was just asking a question. You know what happened? The team repainted the whole auditorium with a different color just because he asked a question. And so you have to be really, really careful and Just understand how other people feel on the other side of your questions. And on another level, you're going to have to work hard just to create a climate where people feel safe to tell you the truth. For example, this is true story. I asked a team member one time, do you think we should do this? And he said, no, definitely not. And he was so confident that it surprised me because I thought, I'm not sure. It's really clear, you know, maybe we shouldn't do it. But it's just not clear to me. And since he was so confident, I thought, obviously he knows something I don't know. So I'm like, well, great man. Tell me why we shouldn't do it. And the next thing you know, he flipped his whole thing. He said, oh, actually, I think we should do it. Which one is it? You know, you just told me no with confidence. Now you're telling me yes. And the problem is, and it's not his fault, but he wanted to please me. And your team, they're going to want to please you, and they're going to want you to like them. And so you have to work really, really hard to say, hey, tell me the truth. Like, what do you really, really think? And you've got to create a climate where they feel safe, where they feel confident, where they can speak for freely. So to get good and helpful information, you want to ask good and helpful questions. And remember, I'm going to say it again. The quality of the questions you ask will determine the quality of the information that you get. Warning, and please hear me on this. You got to be super careful when you're asking questions that you do not fish for what you want to hear. I do this, you're likely to do this. It's so easy to ask leading questions. And so what you want to do is you don't ask questions to confirm your biases. You ask questions to determine what's true and helpful. Don't ask leading questions. And we do this all the time. You're coming, like, going, hey, why do you think this event wasn't very good? You set the tone and just you're helping. Tell them you don't like the event. Or, like, you'll say something like, you don't think she's doing a very good job, do you? What's your employee gonna say? They're gonna agree with you. Or you'll say, like, our pitch was amazing, wasn't it? This is a dumb question. And so I want to say it again. When you're asking questions, you're not searching for information to confirm your biases. You're asking open ended questions. You're absorbing information. You have to walk in and assume you know nothing. And anytime I walk in with a pretty strong opinion, I kind of have this posture, like prove it wrong. Like if you can prove it wrong, I want you to prove it wrong. I think I may know, but, but I could definitely be wrong. So I'm really, really open to it. So let's get practical. How do you ask open ended questions? And this is super important, watch how you ask questions and see what word you're using to lead your question. And I'm going to tell you right now, start with what or how instead of did or do. Anytime you're asking a question, look at where you start with what or how instead of did or do. So you're not going to go to someone and say, do you like this plan? What are their choices? Yes or no, conversation over. Instead you say something like, what, hey, what do you think about this plan? Or what can we do to improve? You're asking to open in a question. You give them plenty of room to give you honest feedback. Or you're not going to say like did you understand the instructions? That's you know, yes or no. Instead you could say like, hey, how clear were the instructions? Or what questions do you have about the instructions? And you're getting their detailed thoughts, their opinions, not one word answers. And then once they answer, stay curious. This is ridiculously important. They start talking. They're not done yet, but you tend to think you know, you've heard everything. Often the most valuable thing, they're holding back. And so you say these three things over and over again. Tell me more. Why? What else? You ask a question, hey, tell me more about that. Oh, okay, great. Help me understand why you believe that or hey, what else are you not telling me? Tell me more. Why? What else? Say those things over and over and again. Train yourself. When they speak one time, you think you've got everything. And just remind yourself they got way more in them. They haven't told you yet. They're often holding back. They're kind of seeing, is it safe? They might have an idea they haven't told you. So hey, tell me more about this. Why? What else? Because the best and most helpful information is rarely ever on the surface, right? You drill for oil, you dig for gold. And so with people you got to do the same thing. You got to dig for wisdom. And so when you're doing this, you want to listen really carefully, you Want to listen to what you hear. You also want to listen for what you don't hear. Super important. You want to listen to what they say. You also want to listen to what they don't say. You want to watch for what you see, and you also want to watch for what you don't see. And this is important because sometimes what you don't hear, what they don't say, and what you don't see is equally or more important than what you do hear, what they do say, and what you do see. I'll give you some examples. We have 45 different life church locations. And so on Sundays, often I'll visit a campus and just meet people in the lobby. That's all we do. We just talk to people who are serving and attending. And I'll always say something like, hey, tell me your spiritual story. Tell me how you became a part of the church. And then I'll listen for what I hear and what I don't hear. And I listen for language. Sometimes people will say like, oh, I love your church. And when I hear that, that's not exactly what I want to hear. Your is a distancing word. What I want to hear is, oh, I love our church. And that sounds like I'm being nitpicky, and I am. But the difference between someone who loves my church or someone who loves our church is massive in telling me just how bought in they are to the mission. Sometimes I'll visit with, you know, maybe 200 people and I'll hear a lot about the local campus pastor. You know, my pastor baptized me, help me find a life group, and pastor did my marriage and he changed my life. Whatever. Other times, like, I can literally go all Sunday morning talk to a couple hundred people and no one mentions the campus pastor. And that doesn't happen often, but when it does, that's not a good sign. So we're looking for what we hear. Also, we're watching for what we don't hear. And when you're in a conversation, like, trust your instincts because so often you're going to be in a conversation and you're going to think, like, I sense there's something more. I sense there's something you're not telling me. And so just go with it. Like, if you feel that, say like, hey, it feels like you want to tell me more. And then just be quiet and listen. And you would be surprised what all you can find out when you take the time not just to listen to the first thing, but to dig a little bit deeper. Now I want to shift gears and tell you this. And this is again, I know I keep saying it, but these are game changing principles. I promise you this. Not only do you learn by asking questions, but you also learn by observing what kind of questions other people ask you. I'll give you several examples. You're doing a job interview. At the end of the interview you're usually going to say, do you have any questions for us? Don't say that. That's a dumb question for you to ask. What I always say, I don't ever say, do you have any questions for us? I always say, hey, I'm sure you got a lot of questions. Fire away. Why do I do that? Because the questions they ask really determine a lot about how I feel about them as a candidate. What you want to do is you want to hear their questions. Not just do you have any questions that's like, yes or no? Or they ask you one question like, hey, I know you got a lot of questions, ask away. I'm trying to set the tone where like, I want to hear five, six, seven, eight questions from you. And the reason why I want to hear their questions, because what people ask about determines what people value. What they ask about is a reflection of what's important to them. If they ask, well, how many hours do you expect me to work around here? Or tell me all about the benefits or when can I be promoted? Some of the worst questions, but they're kind of close, right? If that's all they ask about, that might be an indication this is not the best candidate. I'll give you another example. Whenever I visit Life Church locations, if you can imagine, with 45 of them and doing this for almost 30 years, I've done hundreds of visits. Three decades. And so when I walk into a place, because I've done it so many times, there are patterns. There's a shout out. It's like when I see it, I see it. When I don't see it, it should be there when they say it. I mean, they just, it's just, it's like, it's like, it's like my head's about to explode with information based on the patterns that I've seen. And so a lot of times we'll do dinner with the staff and I let them ask questions and there are questions I want to hear and there are questions that aren't the best ones because questions reveal priorities and values. People ask about what they care about. And so whenever a staff says something like, okay, so you spent Sunday here, what's one thing we can do to improve. Or what did you notice that we might miss? Okay, those are growth questions and those are telling me the staff's posture to learn. Sometimes they'll say like, how did we compare to other campuses? Or did you notice anything wrong? Again, it's not a huge thing. But they're focused on comparison and validation rather than transformation. It doesn't matter how you compare. And you're not looking for something wrong. You're looking for something that's right and to grow. And so I'll sometimes coach people on how to ask questions and, you know, gently but firmly, I do a quarterly new staff member meeting where all of our new staff members come and younger 23 year old ask, hey, what do we need to do to keep from burning out? And I didn't like her question. I didn't tell her that, but I tried to coach her and I said, hey, I'm, you know, I'm really glad you asked that because I want you to be healthy, I want you to be strong. But, but what you did is you started with a negative assumption like that we're going to burn out. And so that actually frames your expectations and you're afraid of burning out. So a better way to ask it would be like, hey, what habits or spiritual disciplines helps you stay energized and focused? That's a question that brings about the right answers for health rather than a defensive posture. Or I said, you could have asked like, you know, hey, Craig, what fuels your spiritual passion that's kept you driven for three decades? And so those questions actually get the information that you're looking for instead of being defensive. And again, I know these are nitpicky things, but it's the small tweaks that often bring about the big results because the quality of your questions will impact the quality of the answers that you get. Now, I've gone long today, longer than I normally do. So you hope you have a longer workout. I'm going to wrap this up in just a moment, but I want to tell you about what we're going to cover in the next episode because we got a lot of important stuff to cover. In part two, we're gonna dive into the specific questions that separate the best leaders from the rest of the leaders. And I promise you we're gonna get stupid practical and I'm gonna show you very specifically what to ask and how to ask to get the best information, to care about your team because they matter and to drive the best results. Also, last month I just released A new book, the Benefit of doubt. How confronting your deepest questions can lead to a richer faith. This is a Christ centered book that deals with spiritual doubts and we want to give away some of those books we couldn't figure out like what to have you type in the comment section. Like, I want Craig's book, give me your book. And so we asked Grayson, the audio engineer, shout out Grayson loud. Shout loud, loud, loud. He is the Internet audio engineer and he said have him type in I like free books. So if you'd like to win one of five free books, type in the comments section at YouTube or Spotify, wherever you can. I like free books. And we will see if you want a free book. So what's your assignment now? Your assignment is this. Be curious, be engaged, be open, be prayerful. When you ask questions, you start to get information. I like to sit on it and I like to start to connect the dots. I heard this and I heard this and then I like to pray. I like to listen to God. And I tell you right now, like, trust your gut because you're learning, you're absorbing, you're internalizing and you're processing. And you know how if you ever use AI, AI is learning you. Well, here's what's really cool is you're not AI. You don't have artificial intelligence, but you have God given wisdom and that's a great thing. And so what do you do? You're asking questions, you're, you're absorbing, you're processing and you're listening beyond the noise and you're thinking beyond the obvious and you're praying beyond the possible. And when you ask better questions, guess what, you get better insights. And then you move beyond the surface level conversations and you uncover what truly matters to people and what they're seeing. And you stop settling for quick answers and you're pursuing deeper wisdom. And you're not asking questions to use the people that serve with you, but you're asking questions to know them and to love them and to value them. And you don't just react to what's seen or what you hear, but you discern what's unseen or unspoken. Because, and again, you know, I'm a pastor, so I gotta say it. We serve a God who can do exceedingly and abundantly more than all you can ask, think or imagine according to his power, that is work within you. So there's more in you. And I want to encourage you as a leader. If you're starting out, if you're a seasoned leader, wherever you are, ask great questions. Ask the right questions. Why? Because the right questions at the right time will change everything. Thanks for investing. Half an hour with me today and I believe you're getting better. I'm getting better. We're all getting better. And that's good news, guys.