Chad Silverstein argues leaders should respond to requests for answers by asking questions instead. This trains team members to think independently, builds trust, and creates leaders who can develop other leaders.
Chapters
I was just learning about this idea in day 283 called Ideas. And it's so cool when you think about how powerful it is to challenge people who you're leading by asking them curious questions. When they come to you for an answer, it's genius. You answer their question with a question and you make them answer it. Even as just practice, you know, they come to you with a problem that you know you can solve, there's a solution that you have the answer, they know, that's why they're coming to you. And instead you tell them, what would you do? Give me three ways that you might deal with that. And you get people trained to be able to empower them. And you know when you can get other people coming up with the solutions and other people know it's their doing that gets them to wherever they're going and not just something that they were spoon fed by a leader. That is how leaders build leaders who build leaders. And that's a worthy aim for any leader to want to build a leadership team that can build another level of leaders. And the way you do that is you challenge them, challenge them with curious questions, you build the trust and you make sure that you empower them by having them come up with solutions, having them tell you what they think before you tell them what you think. And it's just a discipline, it's a habit. And if you're a leader, you got to get good at it.
