In the blog over the past few weeks, I have looked at tips to develop leadership capability and effectiveness, specifically how to get greater employee engagement and create the right environment for high performance.

This week, I am going to provide some tips that will help to challenge the status quo and some questions to help do this. An important part of a leader’s role is to look to create an environment where there is commitment to continuous learning and innovation. The world is changing at a fast rate accelerated by the advancement of technology. It’s important that teams and businesses constantly look at ways to meet the challenges of these changes and evolve.

It’s never a great idea for leaders, when asking questions about processes and ways of doing things, to accept the answer “we’ve always done it this way” as a reason to not explore alternative approaches. What may have worked in the past may need some refinement and adjustment to help generate greater efficiency, customer service and/or profitability. What has worked in the past may not be what is relevant to today or plans for the future. It was Einstein that said the definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different set of results.” If we want different results, we have to do some things differently.

Asking great open questions is a skill for leaders to hone in order to increase their influence and effectiveness. It’s vital tool to help challenge the status quo and current methods. It helps develop relationships and trust when you use well structured, timely and relevant questions.

An open question that encourages people to offer their ideas and opinions on a particular topic will be useful and help people feel valued and involved. It will help increase engagement levels and also displays that you are open minded. It displays that you’re willing to listen to people’s views rather than force your ideas on others and implement your ideas without input. Really listening to people and taking action on their responses and suggestions really helps to develop a high performing team and encourage greater collaboration.

Here are a few tips and suggestions to challenge the status quo:-

  • Regularly ask colleagues for their ideas about how to improve the team’s performance. Openness to others ideas encourages participation, greater commitment and accountability. It also increases the quality of interaction with colleagues and develops increased trust.
  • Frequently ask questions that help identify the obstacles that hamper performance and your efforts to increase efficiency, productivity and customer service. Ensure that you follow up on the responses to these questions and take action to remove the obstacles.
  • Use effective questions to uncover the habits and practices that are outdated and no longer serve the team. 90% of what we do is habit, so it’s important that we have daily rituals and habits that help develop performance levels and results. We have always done it this way is not a good enough reason to keep a practice or procedure that is out of date or no longer working.
  • Develop excellent listening skills to absorb what you learn from asking questions. You learn more from listening than talking! Become known for acting on what you learn as this will build credibility in the process and encourage future involvement.
  • Regularly hold team meetings that address the following questions:-

1) What’s working well?
2) What’s not quite working yet?
3) What’s stopping us being the best we can be?
4) What needs to change to increase (you can insert something like results/efficiency/customer service)?
5) What action steps are we going to commit to?

This week, why not take a few moments to reflect on your personal and professional lives or a team that you are involved in. Consider what’s working well, what’s not quite working yet and what needs to change and devise some personal action points.

This week’s quotation:

“It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” Harry S Truman.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk