Great leaders ask questions and so often receive the best insights

Great leaders should make as few decisions as possible but as many as necessary.

Build a team capable of making operational decisions.

Great leaders should make as few decisions as possible but as many as necessary. As counterintuitive as that sounds, being a leader doesn’t mean calling all the shots all the time.

Founders and business owners, by default, do everything at the beginning. Decisions as complex as deciding on office location sit side-by-side with decisions on recruitment, marketing, pricing and what kind of biscuits to buy for the tearoom.

There’s a sense of safety about this arrangement; a feeling of complete control.

But as the business grows, founders and owners must cede control over a range of decisions and trust the team to act in their best interests.

The challenge is threefold: first, build a team capable of making operational decisions; second, learn which decisions can be delegated and which cannot; third, delegate. None of these steps are easy. It is an iterative process with mistakes to be made and lessons to be learned.

Some may argue this loosening of the reins is bad for business; that effective leaders must be across every detail, consider every opinion and make every decision. But even the greatest leaders do not have all the answers. As MIT Leadership Centre executive director Hal Gregersen put it: “Questions are the answer.”

In his book of the same name, Gregersen interviewed more than 200 of the world’s most innovative leaders in business, technology, government and social enterprises. In doing so, he found that great questions have a catalytic quality; that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious.

Gregersen’s research suggests a leader’s contribution is best made not in detailed instructions and opinions in response to incessant questions about “what to do” but in the art of asking insightful questions. One must affirm with colleagues that the problem they are facing is high stakes, help them process the options, then encourage them to make the best decision available.

This may feel alien for both leaders and staff at first. But, given time, this approach has the potential to create confident teams that make daily operational decisions, allowing their leaders to spend more time thinking strategically rather than choosing between Tim Tams and Monte Carlos.

Those who choose not to empower their teams through insightful questions are unwittingly limiting their own business potential.

Pixar and Disney president Ed Catmull, praised as one of the most innovative questioners in business, notes that isolation at the top of an organisation leads to a “dangerous disconnect” from reality.

The more portfolios and channels of the business there are to be across, the less one can possibly learn about the detail within them. It’s unreasonable to expect the person furthest from the coalface — and arguably the least informed — to impose unilateral decisions on crucial matters such as IT, legal contracts, staff performance, local protocols and performance.

The key is not in having all the answers. It is in making sure that those who know the detail are aligned to the company’s mission and core values, have considered all of the options, and are empowered to exercise their best judgment. If staff are allowed to make more considered decisions, accordingly their leader must make fewer. It is simple mathematics. And much better business.

Jason Smith is chief executive of the Back in Motion Health Group and author of Outside-in Downside-Up Leadership.