How to Lead Your Team Through Questions

Dear Leader,

I trust this meets you in pursuit of wisdom.

I feel energised to be back to the office (corporate work mode activated) after being off for two weeks – for my wedding and post wedding rest.

In my last two letters, I shared with you questions I ask myself daily to guide my self leadership journey, I thought this week’s letter would help you especially if you lead a team. I lead a team at work and I work hard to be a better leader at work so we can learn a few things from each other.

Leading a team is the most humble process for leaders because people are very dynamic and complex to lead. If you lead yourself well, you are halfway successful in leading others because you can’t lead others well if you don’t lead yourself well.

In my experience, whenever I have the opportunity, I always like to ask my team members these questions:

1. What do you think? It is naive to think you have all the answers because you are the leader of your team. In working with people, you must know how to leverage the intelligence of the people in your team. What some of your team members think is so valuable to help you solve or avoid problems worth millions of Naira. So, make it a habit to ask your team member, “what do you think?”
   
2. How can I help you? Another way of asking this is “Is there anything I need to help you with to move forward? No matter how you ask the question, when you work in a team, there are certain things only you can do to help the team move forward, there are certain decisions only you will make for the team to move forward. You may be way over your head, try to always clarify with your team members, what can I do for you that would make you more successful or make the team more successful?
   
3. What did you learn? Beyond my team at work, I like to ask people who work with me on any kind of project this question. It helps me take the posture of a learner. There are things people see that you may not see, asking them “what did you learn” from every experience helps both you and them to consciously pick out the lessons from every experience.

Questions are powerful, and you need to know how to ask the right questions to get the right answers.

What other questions can you ask your team members this week that will increase your leadership?

I’m rooting for you,
The Great Owete