A leader's job is to ask real questions in meetings, not to have all the answers. Authentic questions draw out what your team actually thinks, help you understand problems better, and signal that thinking out loud is valued work.
Authentic questions serve the group. People often think of asking questions in a meeting as a way to score some points, show up somebody, you know, win like a debate. And that's why a child does it. And in an adult setting, when you are all working towards a common goal, the objective of a question is to solicit more of the intelligence, more of the talent of the people around you, to get more of their insight, to bring more information information into the process. As leaders, you want to solicit more questions from people who work for you and work with you, because those are going to be all in the service of, you know, getting a better understanding of the problem and engaging them as intellectuals in addition to as workers. And when they're going among themselves, you want to teach them this pattern of like asking a question is a good thing, is a positive thing, is to be rewarded, is service to the group.
