Tania Luna - The Leader Lab

Welcome to the Leader Lab.

Let's begin by examining the first Behavioral Unit (BU) that stood out in our research on what makes great managers different. Imagine you joined us in the lab. You take a seat in a small, dark room behind a two-way mirror and observe a manager in a one-on-one meeting. You switch on your handy stopwatch and let it run for 15 minutes. During this time, you count every question the manager asksW Once time's up, you tally the results. What's your prediction? In the span of 15 minutes, how many questions does an average manager ask? How many questions does a great manager ask?

If you guessed 2 questions for average and 10 for great, you are exactly right. Great managers ask 5 times more questions. Not only does question quantity set great managers apart, it's also a marker of great negotiators, influencers, creative thinkers, and even the secret to getting a second date (Huang et al. 2017). In one study of over 519,000 calls, researchers found that the best salespeople also asked more questions (Orlob 2017). Of course, it's possible to ask terrible questions. (“What were you thinking?” and “How can you be so bad at this?” are definitely questions, and definitely not questions we recommend.) Question quality is essential (more on that in Chapter 8), but the necessary starting point is question quantity . Great managers simply ask more questions than average. In fact, before they go into “Telling Mode,” they default to “Questions Mode.” Their first step is to ask at least one question. We call this BU the “ Q-step.”

How does the Q-stepBU help you become a great manager faster? Let's see its impact in action. We're going to join Mia in her first week as a manager. For context, she is excited about the role but also somewhat intimidated by the challenge of being Luca's manager. She and Luca both applied for the role, and he has more subject matter expertise than Mia. This is their first conversation since they got the news:

Mia leaves the conversation feeling shaken. She tried to show care, but Luca seemed to grow more distant. Mia decides it's time to use her magic Do-Over Button. Let's see her try it again, leaning on the power of the Q-step:

Phew. Good use of the Do-Over Button. Not only did Mia manage to ask 400% more questions, she also Q-stepped, making it more likely that Luca will keep making valuable contributions.

But Mia's day is just beginning. Next up, she sees her team member Olivia. Mia and Olivia have also been peers for several years, but Olivia has shown no interest in management. In fact, she seems to show less and less interest at work in general. So it catches Mia off guard when Olivia comes to her with a new idea:

For a moment, Mia feels great about this conversation. She helped Olivia avoid a big mistake. Then it hits her: she just wasted an opportunity to get Olivia reengaged at work. So, she presses the Do-Over Button:

What impact did you notice once Mia got a Q-stepdo-over? How about in general: what is the impact of asking questions before offering solutions?