The Power of Smarter Questions in Leadership

Ever feel like understanding what your team is truly thinking is a mystery? In today’s episode, Brenton and Ron uncover the power of asking the right questions to gain deeper insights. Learn how these essential types of questions can help you make better business decisions and foster a more open, communicative workplace.

Episode Highlights:

1. The Power of Questions in Leadership:
   • Brenton and Ron discuss how asking the right questions can significantly enhance leadership effectiveness.
   • Emphasis on moving beyond passive listening to active inquiry.
2. Five Essential Types of Questions:
   • Investigative Questions: Clarifying what’s known and uncovering root causes.
   • Speculative Questions: Exploring possibilities and encouraging innovative thinking.
   • Productive Questions: Focusing on execution and planning.
   • Interpretive Questions: Understanding the relevance and impact of information.
   • Subjective Questions: Revealing unspoken thoughts and feelings.
3. Real-World Applications:
   • Examples of how these questions have been used in various business scenarios.
   • Insights from Brenton’s and Ron’s personal experiences in leadership and communication.
4. The Role of Genuine Curiosity:
   • How cultivating genuine curiosity can lead to deeper understanding and better decision-making.
   • Ron’s mantra of “genuine curiosity” and its importance in effective leadership.
5. Building a Question Bank:
   • Encouragement for listeners to contribute to a shared repository of smart questions.
   • Discussion about the HBR article “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions” by Arnaud Chevallier.
6. Practical Tips for Leaders:
   • How to integrate these five types of questions into daily interactions.
   • Strategies for creating a safe environment where team members feel comfortable speaking up.

Resources Discussed in the episode:

• HBR Article: The Art of Asking Smarter Questions
• Book: "That’s a Great Question" by Greg Bustin
• LinkedIn Group: Business Builders Podcast Community

Conclusion: By mastering the art of asking smarter questions, leaders can gain deeper insights, foster a culture of open communication, and make more informed decisions. Join us next time as we continue our series on effective communication.

Call to Action:

• Join the discussion in our LinkedIn group to share your experiences and favorite questions.
• Check out the recommended resources to further enhance your questioning skills.

Subscribe & Follow:

• Subscribe to the Business Builders Podcast on your favorite platform.
• Follow us on LinkedIn for updates and community discussions.

Next Episode Teaser: Stay tuned for our next episode, where we’ll delve into the importance of non-verbal communication and how it impacts leadership effectiveness.

Transcript

Ron Tomlian: 0:00

Hey there Business Builders ever wished you had a crystal ball that would let you read people's minds? Well, today we're talking about the questions that leaders can ask to truly get a handle on what's going on. These five question types are guaranteed to generate the kind of insights that we need to make more informed business decisions. Welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts, I am Brenton Gowland. And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:31

And if you've just joined us, we're doing the effective communication series at the moment. So we started a couple episodes ago with looking at communication. Last episode was about listening. And today, Ron, what are we talking about.

Ron Tomlian: 0:44

Talking about the importance of Smarter questioning? Because if you're going to listen, it's not just a passive activity. It's about asking questions. So we talked about active listening. And the basis of active listening is knowing how to ask questions. Nowadays, the role of leaders isn't so much about having all the answers because you can't. It's about being able to dig down to be, as you know, genuinely curious. You'd love that I genuinely curious and I think you were talking about it before. Really, the whole basis of interacting with AI is asking questions. And the truth of the matter is, it's no different than interacting with people in your teams, interacting with customers. It's about asking good questions.

Brenton Gowland: 1:39

Yep. It's an essential part of the leaders toolkit. And again, if you've just joined us, of course, we've got a bunch of people who are listening to us regularly. And it's great to have you back. If you've just joined us, the Business Builders podcast, is all about equipping Business Builders, people who are building businesses, leading teams with essential tools. And this asking questions is probably, I would say, one of the top five tools that people would have in their arsenal to actually lead a business, better questions equals better insights, which equals better decisions. Yeah?

Ron Tomlian: 2:13

Absolutely. And involvement as well, because getting your people to answer the questions, giving, and we'll talk about different types of questions today. Giving getting people to answer questions means that they are thinking about, Why is he asking this question? Why is she asking this question? What is he digging for? What is she digging for? So it helps them with the essential activity of reflection as well.

Brenton Gowland: 2:41

kind of works in with your mantra of genuine curiosity as a genuine curiosity that you're going to if you if you go back and listen to our episodes, from the first one, you'll hear genuine curiosity probably more than any other topic Ron speaks about.

Ron Tomlian: 2:57

And its because it's so important in the practice of leading people.

Brenton Gowland: 3:03

And really communication, the whole basis of it is really getting a deep understanding of what the other party or parties are trying to say in their viewpoint, so that we can communicate effectively. And we started this series run, we've given ourselves a rating on how well we communicate. And mine was probably pretty high 7.8 out of 10, we went through a whole question set. And if again, you've joined us for the first time, go back to episode one of this series, which is two episodes ago. And there is a matrix of about was it 10? Questions? Yes. 10 questions to assess your communication skill. And I got to 7.8. Ron, I think you got to 6.7 less, right. And my view is I want to look, I spend a lot of time talking with people and communicating as part of my professional business, because I'm a marketer. So my job is to understand and you don't market is and journalists, and PR people and communication centric people are, I think, lucky in the fact that they're trained very clearly about communication, because our whole business is communication and perception and so forth. So I think marketers get a bit of an unfair advantage in this bucket.

Ron Tomlian: 4:24

In my opinion, or by experience, unfortunately, marketing communications training tends to be a lot about putting out information rather than gathering information. Interest if you if you talk about the marketing concept, no question, listing to your customers getting information in very important, but most marketers and we've talked about this before, a lot of marketers are really marketing communications people and I am not convinced that a lot of them have been well trained in the aid of questioning in the in the age of listening?

Brenton Gowland: 5:05

Well, I've had a bit of a different path to a typical person, I haven't gone through uni marketing, my training was on graphic design. And that's a little bit different. But I learned the marketing along the way of working with businesses, starting my own businesses, working with others, and so forth. And then finding a lot of resources online, like podcasts, like training and so forth. But the key thing you hear over again, is market insights, market research. So this is from your work in uni's with?

Ron Tomlian: 5:34

If you if you talk to a lot of market researchers, and people who are interested in backing insights, they often feel that their profits in their own land, they talk to marketing people, and it's all about getting information out rather than getting information in. Yeah. So they, I think they feel that there should be more emphasis. And I agree with them, there should be more emphasis on listening to customers, listening to their perspectives, understanding where they're at, because quite frankly, if you don't, whatever you say, can be misconstrued. It has no context. So you need to start with context. And you do that by listening.

Brenton Gowland: 6:16

Well, I would say, the best marketers out there would be people who ask lots of questions, what we're going to talk about today, and I think the best leaders do as well. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I would hope if you're listening to us, and you're a marketer, that one of the I always remember when we did this job for a particular client. And this was my first soiree into this, or how do you say it was that word for a, for a foray into this, um, see, I'm expanding my vocabulary. When I work with you mister union lecture, we went, we were doing a project for a client. And this was I think it was in my 20s, we, we went out to all the sites like service stations, where they sold this product, examined what was on the shelf, had a look, talk to people selling the product, and really gathered a lot of information it made for a much better project. And I always remember that just embedded in my head, and I might have been, I think I was 28 ish. I've just remember at that point going, Wow, this has made such a difference to this project, going, seeing, feeling touching, talking to the outcome. And that just was a change moment for me. an aha moment. Yeah. And like you said, with, and we'll get into this, we won't do the preamble too much longer. But I do a lot of work with AI and helping people integrate it into their businesses now. And, as I said to you earlier, that's something that's just kind of evolved in what I've been doing recently. And I find a lot of people even who go out and talk about aI don't really know how to get the best out of it. And to get the best out of it. You need to interact with it in such a way that you actually ask questions, not just how do I do this, but you need to give it context, you need to treat it like a person. And I always tell people to treat it like a junior assistant who's much smarter than you, but hasn't got the experience of being out in the world.

Ron Tomlian: 8:13

Don't give away all the trade secrets yet.

Brenton Gowland: 8:15

Believe me, I've worked out by going and doing seminars with people. It's just shocked me, the AI literacy. I had this weird idea in my head that everyone was doing similar things to maybe there's a big gap to fill in building AI literacy and businesses right now. But take it from me, structuring questions and talking with the AI like we did this policy for a company that is operating in the UK, and might have mentioned this in the past, but the privacy laws in the UK have changed. And it's made it very complex to create privacy policies now. And we used an AI Well, chat GPT, in this particular instance, created a GPT and developed a policy using that as an assistant to help us help us brainstorm how to do that. And it worked really well not a quick process, but really helped us but we had to ask it really solid questions, to get the right information structured so that we can put that into a policy. So questions are important in both critical artificial intelligence world and the real world

Ron Tomlian: 9:20

And the real world because the less be fair, people are much more complicated, then then AI is at the moment. And using questions helps, both with your understanding of the situation but their understanding so that you don't have I mean, the typical role that people saw for leaders, and it was a false one is having all the answers. Now nobody has all the answers. But asking insightful questions can get all the answers on the table. And someone I know who works with leaders a lot often said, for a wise man, half the answer is in the question. And I think that's really insightful. It's not to say that he or she, who's asking the question has the answer. It's knowing the right question to get the answer out. So that it is on the table. That's great. Yeah. So one of the things that when we were looking at the importance of questioning, we were looking at what we're, where could we get information on this stuff other than our own experience? And luckily, I've seminal articles recently be written The Art of Asking smarter questions by Arnaud Chevalier.

Brenton Gowland: 10:34

Say that name again,

Ron Tomlian: 10:35

Arnaud Chevalier.

Brenton Gowland: 10:36

I love French names. Is it Arnaud?

Ron Tomlian: 10:38

Arnaud, Frederica Dalsace, and John-Louis Barsoux. So I've probably pronounced them all incorrectly.

Brenton Gowland: 10:47

Three people with amazing name.

Ron Tomlian: 10:49

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland: 10:49

Did this study?

Ron Tomlian: 10:50

Did study about that. And they talked to a number of different organizations and leaders about the type of questions they asked. And one of the things they found, and it's a great framework to think about, one of the things I found is there's five different types of questions. And depending, the first thing that they talk about is the fact that we all have a level of or a type of expertise. Oh, yeah, I mean, I used to say, I did engineering, and then went into marketing. And the great thing about engineering is that it helps you with problem solving, no question. It's a great problem solving discipline. It's all about problem solving.

Brenton Gowland: 11:28

A technical problem solving discipline.

Ron Tomlian: 11:30

Yeah. But the thing is, it puts you into a mindset of problem solving. And sometimes the questions you need to ask are not problem solving questions. They're questions maybe to expand the scope, or to ask the relevance, or to bring people back to what the objective is. So just being comfortable with the set of questions that plays to your prospective plays to your discipline, is often not enough and leaves a lot of questions unanswered and unasked on the table. And that's important. So what these guys said, and after reading the article I, I can see the relevance is look at all the types of questions that you can ask. And they they, they purport that there are five types of questions you should be asking to help people uncover all the information associated with an issue or a problem, or project or an opportunity. The first type of question is invested questions, asking about what's known. When we do problem solving or issues processing, as we call it in tech groups, we often talk about, once somebody's put an issue on the table.

Brenton Gowland: 12:42

Can you just explain what issues processing is because.

Ron Tomlian: 12:44

It's a process that we go through, to help look at an issue or a challenge, or an opportunity, or one of the members of the group to try and unpack the whole issue. So that we can make recommendations but to do that.

Brenton Gowland: 13:01

So that just for clarity, that is one person brings a problem, and then you've got a team of in your case, CEOs, because you've got a group of CEOs, that's fine. We'll ask probing questions to unpack that problem. So they're pulling it apart by asking questions in order to then give them advice yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 13:18

Absolutely right. And we don't allow people to ask or provide solutions, until we feel we've sufficiently unpacked the problem. Great. And often, the problem that's put on the table is not the real problem anyway. But you only discover that by asking questions. So the first type of question is, what's this all about? What's known, and we call them clarifying questions. So they're questions about digging deeper, investigating the importance of a problem investigating the scope of a problem, investigating the various aspects of a problem, like financial aspects, operational aspects, human resource aspects, and so on.

Brenton Gowland: 14:05

So these are generally the questions that we all ask this is investigative questions are probably the most common type of questions. Yes?

Ron Tomlian: 14:15

Absolutely. But they're, they are limited. I shouldn't say limited. They are aimed at getting as much information out on the table as possible. They're not aimed at and we shut this down do. They're not aimed at providing solutions? And unfortunately, people are pretty good at making a statement. That's couched as a question like, have you tried? Have you thought about doing this? So and that's a solution catches a question.

Brenton Gowland: 14:49

So this is more about things like the five why's? Yeah, well, the five why's i which was a process developed by Toyota? Not Toyota, but the guy who Oh Honda Toyota, Toyota suggested that if you ask the question, Well, why is that the case? You should keep asking that question from the basis of the answer, five types, so that you get to the root cause. And if you look at the quality concepts, they often talked about getting down to the root cause of a problem, not just accepting the first suggestion of why something happened. But asking, why did that happen? And why did that happen? And why do you say that? And getting down to to the root cause of the issue. So if you like, the investor questions, the knowing questions are all about getting into root causes, getting down to the real essence of the situation. And then some of those questions we've talked about in the past, like you talked about a lot? Like I think your favorite line, other than the curiosity comment, is

Ron Tomlian: 15:53

Tell me more about that

Brenton Gowland: 15:54

Correct.

Ron Tomlian: 15:55

Yeah. And it is, it's it's trying to unpack the situation as best you can, and getting the people with the issue or the problems, to see it in a different light to see it in a different perspective. Because oftentimes, they haven't asked themselves these questions. That's the power of

Brenton Gowland: 16:14

Genuine curiosity.

Ron Tomlian: 16:16

And the group. Yeah, the team that you're working with? So that's the first type of question.

Brenton Gowland: 16:21

Okay.

Ron Tomlian: 16:22

Very important in framing, or getting context.

Brenton Gowland: 16:25

So I think that's what we're all familiar with. So the next set. Five questions, so that's one.

Ron Tomlian: 16:30

The second type of question they put forward is speculative questions, and exploring the possible the what if questions, how might we do this? Emphasizing the role of innovation and creativity? In other words, what if we thought more broadly? What if we didn't have these type of obstacles? Those type of questions tend to be more about getting people to understand that the way they see the problem might not be the only way to see the following.

Brenton Gowland: 17:04

What if we had unlimited resources? And we had as much money as we.

Ron Tomlian: 17:08

Yes. Those sort of things? What if

Brenton Gowland: 17:10

What if we had limited resources?

Ron Tomlian: 17:12

Yes, what, what if we, we, we didn't have the backing of the organisation we have at the moment? But if we were a different organisation? What if we had a different culture? How would we approach this?

Brenton Gowland: 17:24

What if we were a different type of professional? How would we approach this?

Ron Tomlian: 17:29

It's a good question. Because, you know, we were talking about my engineering background. We weren't trained to ask questions, as well as we should have perhaps.

Brenton Gowland: 17:38

Well, the famous story with innovation? Well, this isn't the innovation question is the basis of it. Innovation, the basis of it is basically taking people with similar skill sets, but in different streams, so and getting them to mix together on a problem. And I think, if I got the story, right, the cochlear implant, they had a whole bunch of problems with it. And the scientists were, I think, I can't remember exactly what it was, I don't think it was setting correctly, I think they were breaking and something was going wrong with the product. They eventually the story goes went to a group of commercial bakers, because these things had to be cooked in an oven, some part of them to be set, I think. And the Baker's said, Well, you're doing this, this and this wrong, because this is your process, you need to do this. And they solved the problem by taking it to a different set of professionals who saw the problem with a different set of eyes.

Ron Tomlian: 18:32

And this is where having diversity in your team can add real value to these types of questions. I know in a tech group, for instance, we have people from completely different industries, integrating around a table take group. And the benefit is that you have people who have completely different ways of looking at an issue, looking at that issue for the maybe for the first time, in the case of the person who's put it on the table, but completely different backgrounds. Now, for instance, if you think about medical people, if you think about lawyers Zeo trained to ask questions, because that's the basis of diagnosis of a problem. And the hours like to triage not or triage yet, but I always like to use this the the definition of malpractice is prescription without diagnosis. That's like saying, I've got the answer before I even know what the problem is. So, you know, doctors, lawyers are trained in this business people, not necessarily and people who go into business and not necessarily trained in these questions. So what if questions are really good for, like I say, expanding the scope and getting people to think differently. Okay, the third type of questions is what they refer to as productive questions. focusing on execution the now what? So we've, we've got a good idea of what the problem is. But we might not have an idea of what resources we've got available to solve that problem. How can we achieve this? And what's the significance of aligning resources? And planning effectively, is what we're talking about here.

Brenton Gowland: 20:23

Or we've got a timeframe. So that's one of our challenges that we've got to overcome. So we've got to have this problem sorted out within a month.

Ron Tomlian: 20:30

Yeah, yeah. So what are the what are the constraints? Yeah, to solve it? Well, looking here, there you go. We got that went on eventually, by asking questions. So the productive questions, the the now what questions are focusing more on? Well, if we can, if we can solve this problem? Where do we go from there?

Brenton Gowland: 20:52

And I think it's important to point out that these are still all questions without a prescription. Yes, these are all diagnosis questions. Yes. So back to your issues processing that you were talking about with your tech group and your CEOs? These are several types of investigative questions, which do you do currently, with your tech groups? Ask these kinds of questions.

Ron Tomlian: 21:18

I think we could learn more. And people around the table could learn more about different types of questions. But what because there's such diversity in the group? There's a tendency for some, for some people to ask more of the first class, the investors have questions, and some people to ask more of the what if questions, if they're speculative questions, and for others to ask the now what do the more practical people, you know, sort of say, well, that's all well and good. But you don't have the resources to do this. So you know, what are we talking about here? What are the constraints?

Brenton Gowland: 21:52

So by having a number of different people in the room, you're getting some of these types of questions naturally?

Ron Tomlian: 21:57

Yes, exactly. But I think all of us could learn more by questioning,

Brenton Gowland: 22:01

I was gonna say, let's bring that back to our own personal toolkit. As a leader, we need to have a way of asking these and saying this in our mind. And I really liked the, you know, investigative questions, or the what's known speculative questions, the what if and what we're talking about now is now what so we've got three types of questions in our portfolio that we need to build to become, well, better listeners, but also better leaders.

Ron Tomlian: 22:28

There's a, there's two more, there's two more in Chevalier is repertoire that he talks about. I'm looking forward to number five, you know that. And the next is interpretive questions. The So what questions? And I love these questions, because a lot of people put information on the table, and have never thought about, well, what's the relevance of that? We know this now. So what? So what, what does this mean? And it often gets that question being put on the table, or those type of questions being put on the table often bring people back to what are we trying to achieve here anyway? What's the what's the initial objective of what we're trying to do? And even asking whether the initial objective is still relevant? And what we do in the TEC group? We ask that so what question are saying, Okay, we've heard all this information, we've got all this perspective, is the problem we put on the table, originally, still the same problem that we're looking to deal with?

Brenton Gowland: 23:29

Yeah, that's interesting. That's like bringing us back to the brief bringing us back to the main point.

Ron Tomlian: 23:33

Yes, absolutely.

Brenton Gowland: 23:34

It's like the circle almost been completed.

Ron Tomlian: 23:36

Yeah, you'd be surprised at how often the problem that's put on the table is not the problem at all. It's much deeper. And I remember, as an example, we had an issue that someone put on the table at a tech meeting many years ago, and it was about whether I should go with my sales manager to another country to close this deal. Okay, so that was that was the question was put on the table? How do I how do I tell the sales manager that really I should be going to this, as a CEO, I should be going to close the deal. And as it developed, it became very clear that it wasn't about whether each as the CEO should go, it was about whether he should be involved in the sales process at all, because he had very little experience. He was great at running an organization. But in this field, he had very little experience in closing deals, very little experience in the type of product he was talking about. And it came down to ego. And he suddenly realized that he was leaving that organization from the front to satisfy his ego, rather than looking at well, actually, what we're trying to do is get more sales, and that would be more effectively done by some of these other people. closing, dealing with the customers and closing the deals was a huge eye opener for him. And he completely restructured his involvement in the business. And he completely restructured his relationship with some of the other senior executives in the business, because he realized he was not the best person deal with those situations. He to this day refers to it is his aha moment. Okay, because we've reframed the whole problem for him. And it became about looking in the mirror, and recognizing why he was doing things, rather than the effectiveness of the business, which is what he was trying to put on the table.

Brenton Gowland: 25:38

And you know, when we were talking about staff earlier today, and in staff are one of the most challenging parts of running a business people are complex. And often, I think problems that I've come across or challenges within businesses is the people part. And if you think about those who are closest to us, they are more likely to show us if we're not understanding the problem. In a business environment, we know that people will stay silent because they're getting a paycheck. Maybe in today's business world, people are a little bit more empowered to speak up. But often, people will take things a certain way and then just drop it. But our loved ones, if they've known us for a long time will tell us and we might think this is a classic example of where someone snaps, and we go, the snapping is the problem. So then we look at all this diagnosis and understanding and getting to the root of it. Well, it wasn't the snap, it was the fact that back three months ago, no attention was given to a certain thing. And that thing was left to grow and grow and grow. And then right at this particular point, it exploded. And we're talking about emotional stuff here. So this is a good example because the same thing exists in the business world, the event, the problem, as you said is way over here, on this other side is where the solution lies. But we got to dig all the way deep. And these questions really help us get there.

Ron Tomlian: 27:06

Absolutely. And you've segwayed beautifully into the final type of question, which is the subjective question which I've been looking forward to? Absolutely. Because this is this is the I think, the part of the framework, that shirt suggests that really differentiates it from a lot of other questioning regimes.

Brenton Gowland: 27:28

And it differentiates leaders. And it's been most leaders, I would say, because it's been my biggest problem. And you'll see why in a sec. But I wanted to preempt what you were going to say because this one, I would say, probably 80% of our listeners would have struggles in this area.

Ron Tomlian: 27:49

Oh, absolutely. And I think it's in business, the one we neglect the most because it's uncomfortable. And that's what's unsaid. Indeed, what's being left on the table without anyone acknowledging that something's been left on the

Brenton Gowland: 28:05

How many times have you heard well, I say this table. a bit. I've, when someone says something to me, I'll say, Well, I failed mind reading at school. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Which is a lazy way of saying I didn't take the time to really understand what you are saying.

Ron Tomlian: 28:20

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland: 28:20

I admit that.

Ron Tomlian: 28:21

And and, you know, a lot of it comes down to I didn't ask enough questions. And this question is a good one. All these type of questions are good, because it's about the subject subjectivity. How do people feel about this? What are they thinking without saying, what how will they react when we put this proposal out there? How will they, and I know it can be very difficult, especially in teams, like marketing teams, where everyone's enthusiastic and rah rah and I've talked about before, you know, having someone who's very good at seeing the negatives, acknowledging that other people might not see it like we do.

Brenton Gowland: 29:01

Well, I struggled with it to the point when I started Nucleus way back in the day, I remember going into meetings, and I had a business manager who was female. So we would often send a female and a male into a meeting because we were cluing enough to go they might respond better to the male, they might respond better to the female or different people will pick up different things. I'll come out of that meeting and go, Well, that was great. They don't they're on the hook. I reckon they're going to become a client. And my business manager would be, do not understand what was happening in that room. They were thinking this, this and this, and this is what they meant when they said that and I'd be like, but they said this, she would say well, that's not what they meant. And I remember that happened quite a bit in the early days. And it took me a while to start seeing the things that my business manager was talking about. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. Understanding what is unsaid is huge.

Ron Tomlian: 29:55

Absolutely and and it can prevent major problems from how Often, if anyone is familiar with the work of David biocat, who was the next, a captain in the US Navy, he talks about the fact that he was geared up to take on one type of ship, and then was assigned as captain of another type of ship, and was not that familiar with it. But he was the captain. So he had to make the give the orders. And he gave an order that was actually impossible for the ship to undertake, which was, I have to admit, I can't remember he's done a TED podcast on this, okay. TED talk on this. And he talks about the fact that he gave the order and nobody said anything. And luckily, some person, after a while, had the courage to speak up and say, Actually, that's not possible in this type of ship. And he then questioned why didn't anyone tell him that beforehand? And their answer was, you're the captain, we expect you to have all the answers. And he suddenly realized, and he brought his executive team together, he said, we are going to get into real difficulties if people don't feel comfortable about speaking up when they know something's wrong. And so yet, for these type of questions to be effective, you have to have a safe environment, where people feel that they can speak up when answering these type of questions, or speak up and ask questions. And I know, my own experience, there have been environments that I've been in, in executive teams, where you're sitting there thinking, this is the silliest thing I've ever heard, but I'm not gonna say anything, because I don't care that much. The last time I I opened up and asked the question, I got my head bitten off, I'm getting paychecks are getting a paycheck. And I that's more important to me than preventing this potential disaster from happening, all that sort of thing. Everyone, I think listening has been in the situation where they see that there's a problem, they won't speak up, because they don't feel safe in asking that question. And I think it's really important for trust amongst a team to be present before people feel that they can speak up.

Brenton Gowland: 32:20

So that's inside the team. But then there's also external negotiations with clients, will discussions because everything is a negotiation, right? Working together, getting a project finished, getting paid whatever it is, and understanding what's not said, helps us to really understand the context, because what's unsaid is really the context. It's the filter through which we see all the other questions.

Ron Tomlian: 32:47

It's the complete context. And sometimes we limit ourselves, I think, to what we hear, and what we interpret the meaning to be without considering that, that silence is a communicator in itself, and maybe asking the question, what did that silence mean? Or what does oftentimes people ask a question? It's left hanging.

Brenton Gowland: 33:11

So are no Chevelle? Yeah, who wrote this article with the other two gentlemen we spoke about earlier. And you can go have a look at the article, the HBR article, or we'll put it in the show notes, a link to it, because I think it's a great article. And there's also a Harvard idea cast where I know talks with them about this topic. And it's really worth listening to, I think it's about half an hour. Yep. But he suggests there's three things we can ask ourselves after a conversation that help us understand what's really meant or what's, what has been unsaid. So can you talk us through those three things Ron?

Ron Tomlian: 33:51

The three things are? what was actually said? And I think we're all pretty good at that. Although, sometimes we have different recollections of what was said. What did I hear? And that can be different than what was actually said. Because what was said or the words what I heard, might be other things like body language, boys context, expressions. Yeah. Feelings. Yeah. And the third is what was meant, what did the person want to communicate, but maybe didn't say, you know, the oftentimes is just said, silence is a communicator and itself. If you're asked a question and you go silent, that can be interpreted in a number of different ways. And people know that. So is it about ambiguity is that I don't want to answer that question. What was actually being said by that person, by not saying anything? Now that's, that's one example. But asking those three questions. What was said, What did I hear? What did we hear? And what was meant can be three different things and being willing to Be open to the fact that they can be different things is important.

Brenton Gowland: 35:03

And this is an analysis topic, right? So rather than this actually being a question set, this is an analysis of the four question types that preceded this last point that you've made here. And I think that's so huge, because it's like you've gathered all this data. And then it's like, how do we interpret this data? Because the answers to those questions, what was meant, will then help us filter what was said?

Ron Tomlian: 35:32

Because we might have other information that wasn't brought up. Why didn't they bring that information up? Is it because they don't have it? Or they didn't want us to consider that in this decision?

Brenton Gowland: 35:43

It's so important for leaders to understand these kinds of things, one to make really informed decisions, because let's take your example of people not speaking up, if you really explore a situation with someone and no one wants to put their hand up about what's going on. I am almost 100% certain that there will be clues in the dialogue. If you ask the right questions you do the five why's is part of your investigation, ask you speculative questions, ask you productive questions, and then ask the interpretive questions somewhere in there, there's going to be clues as to what's really going on. And it's that last point that you were talking about what's unsaid, that helps us filter that to make the right decision not to tell you all sorts of things that'll tell you whether the person you're talking to is someone who is in line for leadership later on or whether they need help, like we talked to Tim Bishop offline a few weeks ago, and he was talking about mental health, it will help us understand whether our employees are in need of help, it will help us understand whether an opportunity is an opportunity with a client like I'm going through a few clients at the moment setting up their sales pipelines and looking at the opportunities that they've got in those pipelines and working out what's real and what's not. Well, part of that is really understanding what's really going on here what's not said?

Ron Tomlian: 37:08

Yes, absolutely right. And it gives the opportunity for reflection. We've talked about the importance of reflection before but gives you a structure for thinking about what what conversation what interchanges we just have, and it can be done within a team as well. We've just gone through a whole process now. What are the things that we didn't talk about, that we should have been talking about? It could be the way people interpret the information afterwards? How are we going to tell the rest of the organization about this? And how are they going to interpret it? Because we haven't talked about that. And I think that's a that really is an important one. Oftentimes, in instance, planning and so on, it's we've been through a journey, we've been able to ask questions, how are we going to frame this for the rest of the organization so that they get an opportunity to come along this journey as well?

Brenton Gowland: 38:03

Yep. And I think if, if I could get good at these five types of questions and build an arsenal, where I really ask those questions, and yourself, that 7.8 rating that I gave myself with my current communication ability will easily become an 8.2, which is my goal for at the end of this series to improve my communication from a 7.8 to an 8.2. And up from a 6.7 to a 7.5. I reckon you'd go to an eight if you've got this right.

Ron Tomlian: 38:33

I'm absolutely convinced you're right. Because it gives it if we talk about then communication afterwards, it gives complete context to that communication, because we've now unpacked all aspects of what people are thinking about and considering.

Brenton Gowland: 38:52

So look, I think, if you're listening today, we'd really like to ask you to, if you feel like it to share your experiences with us about asking smarter questions. So we've got a LinkedIn group, it's called the Business Builders podcast, just look it up, asked to be a member, because it's a group where you just need to ask to be a member and we will let you in. If you're a real person and not a robot. How much of that is going on at the moment? Yeah. And we will put up a poster to ask people to submit their experiences with asking smarter questions, and help us to build a question bank because we are not, obviously, your authority on any of this stuff. I think I would encourage you to go and read the HBR article by I know Chevallier, what a beautiful name. I've said it seven times, but just makes me happy hearing that. So I would suggest you go and read his article and help us to build a question bank that we can all use.

Ron Tomlian: 39:48

Just as an aside, there's a great book by a guy called Greg bustin, who is the tech chair in America. They call it vistage chairs over there. And it's called that's a great question. And are you asking the right question in business in life? And it's a good book because it gives you some insight into the importance of asking questions, but then provide you literally with a book on the types of questions you can ask and specific questions. In the there's over 1000 questions in the book. That's fantastic. Yeah. And as for all, you know, for unpacking, for getting greater understanding, for delving deeper, for being genuinely curious.

Brenton Gowland: 40:33

Alright, so in the LinkedIn posts, we'll put a link to that book. And we'll also then ask listeners, any experiences that you've had with asking smarter questions. Absolutely. And we would encourage you to engage and those people who contact us on a monthly basis to ask questions, we know who you are, you know who you are, you can jump on there and ask some questions in that forum.

Ron Tomlian: 40:57

So, on that note, it's goodbye from me.

Brenton Gowland: 41:01

And goodbye from me. We look forward to being back with you in a couple of weeks to carry on the effective communication series.