Questions Great Leaders Ask AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast

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Episode: Questions Great Leaders Ask

Author: Life.Church
Duration: 00:22:18

Episode Shownotes

Great leaders ask great questions. In this episode, Craig shares how to influence your peers and leaders through questions. He also gives practical advice for meeting with leaders you admire. Watch video and download the leader guide: https://www.life.church/leadershippodcast/questions-great-leaders-ask/

Summary

In this episode, Craig Groeschel discusses how crucial asking great questions is for effective leadership. He highlights the need for leaders to adopt a curious attitude to foster collaboration and effective problem-solving. Groeschel outlines three essential questions that leaders should ask to clarify objectives, determine the best course of action, and assign responsibilities. Additionally, he underscores the importance of profound questioning to understand personal motivations and encourage continuous growth in leadership. This approach promotes accountability and drives progress within teams.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Questions Great Leaders Ask) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
You want your questions to be kind of innocent and kind of curious, like this. I'll give you a suggestion.

00:00:05 Speaker_00
You'll say like, hey, yeah, I may be the new person here, and I know I'm less experienced than everybody else, so please forgive me if I'm being naive, but can I ask? And so you're setting the tone like that. You're curious.

00:00:18 Speaker_00
You're not coming in with an arrogant attitude. And then you wanna ask some version of these three questions. Hey, it's great to be back for another episode of the Craig Rochelle Leadership Podcast. I wanna say sincerely, I am thankful for you.

00:00:35 Speaker_00
It's an amazing thing to have you in our leadership community, and I have a real passion. I feel like it's a calling to help you get better in your leadership. And so what I wanna do is I wanna talk about what you wanna talk about.

00:00:47 Speaker_00
What we're gonna do is we're gonna do a multiple week series where I'm answering your questions. We ask for questions and man, you guys ask a bunch of them.

00:00:55 Speaker_00
Normally we do an episode on the first Thursday of each month with an occasional bonus episode. Hey, we're going one a week. for as long as it takes to work through many of your questions.

00:01:06 Speaker_00
So our team looked at all the questions and we saw some common themes. I'll tell you what we'll be talking about in the weeks to come. A lot of you are asking about how do you lead up when you're not in charge?

00:01:16 Speaker_00
You talked about lateral leadership questions. How do you lead your peers? Many of you wanted to know how do you develop emerging leaders or what do you do when you're starting a new role?

00:01:25 Speaker_00
Lots of questions about team building and about how to create a great culture. And many of you are dealing with burnout and kind of self-care issues in leadership. So we're gonna hit those themes and more. Let's dive in today.

00:01:39 Speaker_00
Matthew from YouTube asked the question, Craig, what advice do you have for speaking up when you're a part of a team and no one is making the calls?

00:01:49 Speaker_00
What do you do if you're in a meeting and everybody's talking and at the end of the meeting, there's no action, no one's making decisions?

00:01:55 Speaker_00
Matthew, I'm glad you asked that question and I'm really glad that you're noticing and you're wanting to do something about the problem because it's important to remember that anytime you're in leadership in a meeting, you're with a group of people, remember,

00:02:09 Speaker_00
No decision is a decision. If you're not making a decision, you're actually deciding not to decide, and it's impossible to do nothing and make consistent progress. I always tell our team that indecision is the enemy of progress.

00:02:26 Speaker_00
You have to decide I'd rather make kind of an average decision, a decent decision and keep things moving than just stall with no decision at all. And it's a challenge if no one's stepping up and no one's making the calls.

00:02:39 Speaker_00
And let's say maybe you're new to the team or you're somewhere in the organization, kind of in the middle. You're going to want to approach this problem with a helpful tone, not a critical tone. And this is really important.

00:02:50 Speaker_00
And I'm going to talk real straight with you. Matthew, anytime you point out a problem, an insecure leader is going to get defensive. When you come and say, hey, I don't like this, or this isn't right, or we could do this better.

00:03:03 Speaker_00
Anytime you do that, and if your leader is the least bit insecure, they're going to get defensive. And the reality is most of us have at least a little bit or a lot of insecurity in us.

00:03:14 Speaker_00
So you need to be really careful how you approach raising the issue that there is a problem. So what you want to do is you wanna approach this with a kind of a helpful or a curious spirit.

00:03:25 Speaker_00
And what I would suggest is you do is you start by asking questions. And again, watch the tone of your questions. What you're not doing is coming and saying, hey, why won't anyone step up and decide? You're not gonna come in like that or like.

00:03:38 Speaker_00
You know, how do all you guys get promoted into leadership anyway when you won't make it? You're not gonna come in like that. You want your questions to be kind of innocent and kind of curious like this. I'll give you a suggestion.

00:03:49 Speaker_00
You'll say like, hey, yeah, I may be the new person here, and I know I'm less experienced than everybody else, so please forgive me if I'm being naive, but can I ask,

00:03:58 Speaker_00
And so you're setting the tone like that, you're curious, you're not coming in with an arrogant attitude, and then you wanna ask some version of these three questions.

00:04:09 Speaker_00
And they won't be just like this, you'll put them in your own words, but I'm gonna say them, and then I'm gonna say them again, then we're gonna talk about them. You're gonna ask some version of, hey, what do we think is our ultimate objective?

00:04:21 Speaker_00
Number one, what is our ultimate objective? Second thing you're gonna ask is, what is the best way to accomplish this objective? And then the third thing you're gonna ask in your own words is, who's gonna do what and by when?

00:04:34 Speaker_00
So you're gonna say, what's our ultimate objective? What's the best way to accomplish the objective? And who's gonna do what and by when? Let's talk about each of them.

00:04:42 Speaker_00
Matthew, first, you're gonna say in your own words, like, hey, I'm kind of new here, and I'm just kind of curious, so, you know, it would really help me out to understand, like, what are we trying to accomplish? What's our objective?

00:04:52 Speaker_00
What decision are we trying to make? So you kind of start there. This is a non-threatening way to bring closure into the decision or decisions that you need to make.

00:05:02 Speaker_00
And this is crazy simple, but you wanna remind yourself over and over again, and that is this. We cannot do what we don't define. We cannot accomplish what is not clear.

00:05:13 Speaker_00
So what you're doing is if you've got some people that aren't making any decisions, you're kind of zeroing in on what decision do we need to make? We need to define it so that we can do it. And so,

00:05:25 Speaker_00
you're gonna ask something like, you know, what's our objective? You're not gonna use those words, but like, okay, I'm just kind of curious, like, what exact problem are we trying to solve? Or what's the question that we're trying to answer?

00:05:36 Speaker_00
And so you're gonna give them a chance to kind of say, this is what we're trying to do. And so your first question, kind of innocently is gonna be, you know, what's our ultimate objective? What decision are we trying to make?

00:05:46 Speaker_00
What are we trying to accomplish? And then you're gonna ask, again, in your own words, some version of this, like, hey, what do you think's the best way to accomplish this objective? Or what do you think is the best way we can get this project done?

00:05:58 Speaker_00
And you're asking it again with kind of an innocent, you know, what's the best way to solve this problem? And this is a polite, and respectful way just to start moving the group toward a decision.

00:06:11 Speaker_00
You're not coming in saying, this is what we need to do. You're not being arrogant. You're just saying, hey, what do you think we need to do about this?

00:06:18 Speaker_00
About this point, if you're still kind of actively engaged and you're able to keep it moving, you wanna try to help the conversation keep a focus on potential solutions.

00:06:29 Speaker_00
You wanna keep the flow moving toward ways we can solve the problem instead of getting stuck on objections. A lot of times what will happen is if you're looking for a good solution, a good solution often follows an unusual suggestion.

00:06:44 Speaker_00
For example, people will say, well, there's no bad suggestions or no bad questions. It's debatable whether it's true or not. But the reality is in a brainstorming session, when you're trying to solve problems, I mean, just throw anything out there.

00:06:56 Speaker_00
And what we don't wanna do is we don't wanna start shooting down any ideas. We just wanna let the ideas flow.

00:07:03 Speaker_00
If someone says, this may be a dumb idea, it may be a dumb idea or undoable, but it starts the discussion and it gets us moving toward what may be a good idea.

00:07:14 Speaker_00
You're gonna say, hey, I'm new here, or hey, I'm just kind of curious, like, what problem are we trying to solve? What's the objective? And then you're gonna, in your own words, like, how do you think we could go about doing this?

00:07:24 Speaker_00
What's the best way to accomplish this? Then, once you kind of start to get movement, you might ask if it's appropriate, some version of, you know, who's gonna do what and by when?

00:07:35 Speaker_00
Okay, if we know what problem we're trying to solve and we know what's our next step, Who's going to do what by when? This is really, really, really important.

00:07:42 Speaker_00
At the end of most meetings, if your meeting is just to communicate information, you may not need to ask this question. But most good meetings don't exist just to communicate information. Most good meetings exist to push decisions.

00:07:56 Speaker_00
You have to remember that. And so at the end of a good productive meeting, you'll generally ask some version, especially if you're the leader, you're gonna ask like, so what did we decide? Who's gonna do what and by when?

00:08:10 Speaker_00
Why are we asking these questions? The reason is because Matthew, if you've got people that won't make a decision, you've got some passive leaders in the room, Passive leaders tend to pass responsibility. It happens.

00:08:22 Speaker_00
Maybe they're not confident, maybe they've got some issues going on at home and they're not on their game, but passive leaders tend to pass responsibility. And so what your goal is, is you want to try to close the gap.

00:08:33 Speaker_00
You believe the best in all the leaders around you. Everybody's got good intentions, but what we want to do is we want to close the gap and clearly define what is the next step. This is really important.

00:08:46 Speaker_00
Let's say you're leading a church and attendance is going down, or let's say you're leading a business and you can't get a product out in time.

00:08:53 Speaker_00
So you're defining, here's a problem we're trying to solve, and then here's how we think we need to solve it. At this point, what you wanna do is you don't have to resolve the whole problem. You don't have to finish the project.

00:09:06 Speaker_00
You're just trying to create any kind of movement. What you wanna do is define what's the next step. If our church is falling apart, the next step might be to go interview people and find out what's going wrong.

00:09:19 Speaker_00
Or it might be to go talk to another pastor and get his opinion. If you're in business, it might be to set an appointment or make a phone call or get a bid or meet with the board.

00:09:28 Speaker_00
What you want to do is you want to be specific on who does what and by when. We're trying to drive not the whole project, but just what is the next step.

00:09:38 Speaker_00
And if you're always taking the next step, eventually you're gonna be taking ground, who does what and by when. Then what you wanna do is ask, what are we gonna do about this to create accountability? Whenever you say who does what by when,

00:09:53 Speaker_00
you're bringing some accountability to the promises that are being made in this meeting.

00:09:57 Speaker_00
Okay, so Mark's gonna get that, and Blake's gonna get this, and Leanna's gonna get that, and we're gonna have this by next Tuesday, and by the next meeting, we're gonna have all this done, and what do you do? You're creating accountability.

00:10:09 Speaker_00
What is the purpose of accountability? Accountability closes the gap between intentions and actions. We've got good intentions, this is gonna close the gap.

00:10:22 Speaker_00
Matthew, as we covered a lot, I just wanna compliment you on noticing you've got really, really good instincts. If you're in a meeting and you're not driving a decision, that's not generally an effective meeting.

00:10:33 Speaker_00
So again, you're gonna come humbly and say, what's our ultimate objective? What's the best way to accomplish this objective? And who's gonna do what and by when? And it's really amazing and it's really special.

00:10:46 Speaker_00
what a team of people can do together when you've got clear objectives, when you've got a clear strategy, and when you've got accountability. You can make a big, big difference. Hey, Craig here.

00:10:55 Speaker_00
We'll get back to the episode in just a minute, but I wanted to, first of all, share a resource that I think you'll find helpful to your leadership. There's a secret that I've learned about leadership, and we know it.

00:11:05 Speaker_00
The best leaders are almost always the best readers. Why? Because your influence and impact are in many ways a result of the books and ideas that you take in.

00:11:15 Speaker_00
So as I look back over my years of leadership, there are 44 books that rise to the top as books that I believe that every leader should read. So our team has curated the list and organized it into the areas that you'll want to grow in.

00:11:30 Speaker_00
To get this free list, go to life.church slash 44books. That's the number four and four, life.church slash 44books. And I hope this will be a gift to you to dig into a list of great books, get reading, and keep leading. Now, back to the episode.

00:11:48 Speaker_00
All right, let's deal with another one. Harold asks this. When you're meeting a leader that you wanna learn from, how do you ask good questions?

00:11:59 Speaker_00
Super glad you asked this, Harold, because a lot of times people will get with a leader and they'll talk the whole time or they won't ask good questions.

00:12:07 Speaker_00
What you wanna remember, and the fact that you raised that question shows that you know this, is if you're talking, you're not learning.

00:12:13 Speaker_00
Anytime you're meeting with someone, if you're in there doing all the talking, you're not doing any learning, so you wanna come in with good questions. How do you ask good questions? I'll give you some thoughts.

00:12:22 Speaker_00
I would suggest, Harold, first of all, that you start with intentionality. What do you want to learn? By understanding very specifically what you want to learn, you can kind of define the objective of your time with that leader.

00:12:35 Speaker_00
You might want to learn how to make better decisions. You may be indecisive. Maybe you procrastinate, maybe you get caught and you can't move a decision forward. So you might wanna learn, how do you make decisions?

00:12:46 Speaker_00
You may wanna learn, how do they manage resources? One of the most important subjects in leadership that not a lot of people talk about is resource allocation. How do you decide where you put your time?

00:12:57 Speaker_00
How do you decide where you put your money, your best talents? So you might wanna learn how that. You might wanna learn their leadership philosophy. Not just what they do, but how they think. What are their values? What's their strategy?

00:13:08 Speaker_00
What gifts or mindsets do they have that make them unique?

00:13:13 Speaker_00
You might want to learn how they juggle responsibilities, or how they handle criticism, or how they delegate effectively, or how they create momentum, or sustain momentum, or help an underperforming team member.

00:13:23 Speaker_00
So I gave you a lot there, but before your meeting with a leader you respect, you want to be able to finish this statement. This time will be successful if I learn what? This time will be productive if I learn what?

00:13:38 Speaker_00
So you want to go into the meeting with a real specific idea of what you want to learn. You're going to be intentional. Second thing is I suggest is focus on how and why questions. Focus on how and why.

00:13:52 Speaker_00
You don't wanna just know what they do, but you wanna know how they do it and why they do it. So you might ask like, why did you choose this strategy? Not just what strategy did you choose, but you wanna understand What was the thought process?

00:14:07 Speaker_00
What were they analyzing? What was behind their decision? You might ask, why do you prefer longer meetings? Or why do you prefer shorter meetings? Or why do you not like meetings? Or how do you approach your meetings?

00:14:20 Speaker_00
The quality of your meetings will determine the trajectory of your organization. If you've got bad meetings, unproductive meetings, you can't have a productive organization. So how do you think about meetings?

00:14:34 Speaker_00
You might ask, how do you build trust with your team? Or how do you learn to delegate? So you're coming in, not just what, but why and how. And you want to ask questions that help you discover principles instead of just practices. It's so important.

00:14:50 Speaker_00
You can't copy what they do, but you can learn how they think. You wanna try to get into their minds. In a similar lane, number three, I would always ask this. Ask about who or what influences them. Super important. Who do you learn from?

00:15:07 Speaker_00
Who stretches you? Do you have a mentor? Do you have a favorite podcast? What books have impacted you? Are there any conferences that you recommend? And this is super helpful because if you can find the source

00:15:19 Speaker_00
of who or what shapes someone that you admire, that can open windows of learning opportunities for you to get better based on the people that are helping them get better.

00:15:29 Speaker_00
And finally, I mean, almost every time I'm interacting with any leader I admire, I always ask, hey, what have you read or listened to recently that's impacting the way you think?

00:15:38 Speaker_00
What have you read or listened to recently that's impacting the way you think? I wanna know every single time what's current, what's shaping them. Every great leader is a growing leader. If you admire them, they're growing.

00:15:50 Speaker_00
They're not the same as the last time you met with them. I guarantee you there's something new shaping them and you wanna find out what it is. Number four, finally. Try to find the story behind their story.

00:16:02 Speaker_00
You're interviewing a great leader and you wanna know, hey, what makes you tick? What's the story behind your success? What's the story behind your ministry? What's the story behind your influence?

00:16:13 Speaker_00
And I wanna slow it down here for a minute because this is a little bit more advanced than what it sounds like. What you're doing is you're looking to discover what's in their heart, not just what's in their head.

00:16:23 Speaker_00
And this is really important because what makes a person great isn't just head knowledge, but there's usually something else. There's a drive.

00:16:32 Speaker_00
there's a hurt they're overcoming, there's a promise they made that they'll never or they'll always, and you wanna find out what's in their heart. And most people never get to this level of a conversation.

00:16:44 Speaker_00
And so what I like to do is I like to say something like, you know, toward the end of a conversation, we're clicking, we're close, like, man, there's something special about you. There's a reason you're different. There's a reason you stand out.

00:16:56 Speaker_00
So you set it up like that, Because most people don't ever say that to them. And then you say, like, can you tell me the part of the story that most people never think to ask about?

00:17:06 Speaker_00
Or can you tell me the part of your story that most people don't know about you? Can you tell me the part of the story that most people wouldn't understand? And what you're doing is you're digging deeper.

00:17:14 Speaker_00
And if you can go deeper, you can hit a well of wisdom. And I found that when you can take, I call it taking the levels down. So your surface questions, normal questions, we're going deeper and deeper and deeper.

00:17:25 Speaker_00
We wanna find the story behind their success. And there's always one, and people rarely ever talk about it. A couple of more thoughts on this subject. When you're digging like that,

00:17:37 Speaker_00
As often as you can, you want to find someone several steps ahead of you. You want to talk to someone whose business is five times the size of yours, not just 20% bigger.

00:17:47 Speaker_00
You want to find someone whose ministry is 20 years advanced, not just six months in or whatever. And the reason you're doing this is because it's helpful to meet with someone one step ahead, But when you do that, you just learn what I call tweaks.

00:17:59 Speaker_00
They're doing, oh yeah, I didn't think of that. And here's how they save a little time. And here's how they're a little more productive. But if you can find someone several steps ahead of you, way ahead of you, they're gonna blow your mind.

00:18:12 Speaker_00
They're gonna tell you stuff like, I never saw that. I've never thought that way. They're going to take something that you're sure is this way, and they're going to tell you the exact opposite.

00:18:23 Speaker_00
And when you meet with someone many steps ahead of you, they give what I call the gift of disorientation. You're like, whoa, I didn't see that coming. I'm disoriented. I've had a few meetings like that in my life where I've walked away

00:18:38 Speaker_00
confused, excited, disoriented, I'm off center. It's like shaking me out of what I was sure was true and opened up my mind to ask questions of like, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I didn't see that. And this is really, really important.

00:18:55 Speaker_00
I want you to pay attention to where you push back the most. Whenever they tell you something and you're like, no, that's wrong, ah, that's stupid, no, not in my case. Whenever you do that, this might be revealing a blind spot in your thinking.

00:19:08 Speaker_00
And I promise you this, they didn't get to where they are by being dumb. And a lot of times, they don't just have a better perspective, it's just entirely different than yours. They've seen more, experienced more.

00:19:19 Speaker_00
And so the point at which you push back the hardest is often the place you have the most to learn. Let me say that again. The point at which you push back the hardest is often the place you have the most to learn.

00:19:32 Speaker_00
I've found in my leadership and ministry, the times when I've said like, ah, they just don't get, oh, they're wrong. Oh, that's dumb. Oh, they don't know my place.

00:19:42 Speaker_00
Most of the time, whenever I push back like that, it's only because my mind hasn't been open to what's possible. I haven't seen what they've seen.

00:19:50 Speaker_00
having experienced what they've experienced, and that's the point where I generally have the most to learn. So I wanna say, Harold, thank you, and to the rest of you for your questions.

00:20:00 Speaker_00
Email us anytime, and I'm not done yet, I got more to tell you, so don't go away. Email us anytime at leadershipatlife.church, and I wanna encourage you to think about your story behind your story.

00:20:14 Speaker_00
The reality is that wherever you are in leadership today, you may not be the leader today that you wanna be, but you have in you already very real leadership potential. When I was 25, 28, 30, 35, 40, 42, 47, I wasn't the leader that I am today.

00:20:34 Speaker_00
But God had already put in me then what was necessary to develop to help become the leader that I am. And I want you just to give yourself permission to think back to your childhood.

00:20:46 Speaker_00
Think about promises that you made, like, I will never be like so-and-so, or one day I promise I will whatever. These are very powerful shaping forces, even the painful times in your life. And I'd say like, especially the painful times.

00:21:02 Speaker_00
And I would say, again, the purpose of this podcast is to develop leaders, not to push my faith on you, but I would just say respectfully that God is writing your story. And I would encourage you to trust him and seek him.

00:21:15 Speaker_00
If you're a person of faith, cry out to him and don't ever underestimate the spiritual side of leadership. What's amazing to those of you who share my faith, we believe that whenever we're weak, Our God makes us strong.

00:21:28 Speaker_00
And that whenever we go through something difficult, God comforts us in the same way, so we one day can comfort and lead others in the same way. And that he's working together all things together for good in our lives, even the difficult things.

00:21:39 Speaker_00
So be encouraged. God is writing your story, and I believe it's gonna be a good one. Before I tell you about what's coming up, I wanna give away some books today that are related to our subject.

00:21:53 Speaker_00
My good friend, Dr. John Maxwell is the best of the best of the best, and he has a book called, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions.

00:22:01 Speaker_00
If you'd like to win one of five copies, hop over to YouTube, if you're not there yet, already go to YouTube and type in the comment section, I wanna ask great questions. If you'd like to win, we'll pick one of five,

00:22:15 Speaker_00
Names, give out five copies of the book and just type in the comment section, I wanna ask great questions. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna drop one episode per week and I'm gonna work really hard to bring you valuable content.

00:22:30 Speaker_00
We're gonna be short, direct, your time is valuable. I'm gonna give you my best to help you get better. What you can do for me, that's a real gift, is if you haven't subscribed, subscribe now. Hit the subscribe button.

00:22:42 Speaker_00
If you've never written a review or rated the content, it's gonna take you 30 seconds. If you do that for me, it'll help us reach more people. And my goal is to bring you the highest value per minute of any podcast you listen to. My goal.

00:22:57 Speaker_00
Hope you join us next Thursday for more of my goal to help you get better, because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.