Speaker A outlines two core skills for leaders: knowing whether you think intuitively or analytically, and reading the room to sense who's engaged or uncomfortable. Probing questions create productive discomfort that pushes people to find their own answers, a habit Speaker A calls essential for gauging where people are and where they can grow.
The number one thing that I would tell people would be you have to know yourself. And there's two parts to that that are really important. One is, are you intuitive? Do you have a good gut on you? Can you really understand what is happening with others? Or are you a cognitive thinker? Cognitive thinkers are people who absolutely must know everything about everything before they can proceed an inch. Intuitive people are very strong in, well, what does my gut tell me? So that's the first thing, you know, know yourself and know what kind of a thinker you are. What I call the second part of what I would talk about, which is the ability to read the room. You have to have a gut feeling of what is happening in the room. I've had several people who have come to me and wanted to be moderators that I've talked to about being a moderator. And then what they talk about or what they can't have an understanding of what's going on in the room. They don't have the ability to read the room. And you have to have a sense of what's going on in the room, who's being distracted, who is paying attention to be able to call people out on that. So you have to have that ability. And that probably ties into the first part that I talked about, which is the ability to know if you're an intuitive person or a cognitive person. You have to read the room.
Yes.
And let them become uncomfortable. It's then what they can really get deep down inside them and answer. Sometimes people say, I don't know what that answer is. And this is what I would say to everybody on the podcast.
I know what's coming. I love this. Go ahead.
If you, if you didn't know what the answer is, What might that be? And all of a sudden, you'll find that people will dig deeper and come up with things. So, so that point of having that ability to ask people questions. Why is this important? Because I have learned over the years that what helps leaders sitting in this room really move ahead is their ability to really to become more and more comfortable asking people questions. Because if you don't ask people questions, how are you going to know where they're at and where they can go and what you as a leader need to do to help them improve?
Yes. So I quote you a lot about that question and that the power is in the question, right? If you don't know your purpose, what if you did know?
Exactly.
