This week on the Vibrant Leadership podcast, we are excited to talk with leadership and question expert Bob Tiede. Bob has been on the staff of Cru for over 50 years and has served on the US Leadership Development Team. His blog, LeadingWithQuestions.com, is in its 9th year and is followed by leaders in over 190 countries. Bob is also the author of multiple books on leadership and questioning. He is a popular resource for leaders in all areas who are looking to find simple ways to become more successful by connecting with and better understanding their teams.
Great leaders involve others in meaningful ways to reach a destination. The more you hear from your team the more opportunities arise for collaboration and the better the outcomes become. Bob understands this and details several simple ways you can begin to utilize techniques that elicit valuable responses from your teams, including:
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How to find the strengths of your team
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How to become a good questioner in 30 seconds
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The connection between bull riding and being a good listener
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The difference between, “how was your day?” and “tell me about your day.”
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And much more…
Be sure to listen all the way through to hear the greatest question Nicole has ever been asked. This is an episode you don’t want to miss!
Mentioned in this episode:
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Website: https://leadingwithquestions.com/
Transcript
Bob Tiede: Leadership is about meaningfully involving others in reaching the destination. In other words, leadership is about team. It’s not about doing it by yourself. But it’s it’s about involving others.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. Today on my podcast, I have none other than Bob Tiede. He is here. And I am so thrilled. And guess what he did? Look at this. If you’re watching the video, look what he sent me. All these goodies. So we’re going to talk about all these books and recordings that Bob has done. So I’m so excited. He’s been on the staff of Cru for 50 years. And he served on the US leadership development team. So Bob is no joke people. His blog leadingwithquestions.com is now in its ninth year. And don’t miss this. It is followed by leaders in over 190 countries.
So this guy is global. He’s worldwide. And Bob is the author of four popular books, which I just held up and showed you, you will make sure that they’re up on the screen, including Great Leaders Ask Questions, and Now That’s a Great Question. Bob and his wife Sherry live in Plano, Texas. Oh, I want to be a Texan. I get to have big hair, wear scarves and broaches and eat Tex Mex every day of your life, and are proud parents of four adult all married children with an they’re super proud grandparents of seven remarkable grandchildren. Please welcome, round of applause for Bob Tiede. Bob, how are you?
Bob: Nicole, I am fantastic. I’ve been so looking forward to this time with you.
Nicole: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. You might have seen on social media, everybody that Bob he, he got a little goodie box for me in the mail. And then he like took a picture. So check out what he’s got. He’s got his Vibrant Leadership podcast Yeti, and he’s shipping some coffee right now check them out. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I’m so grateful you’re here. Well, let’s start out with my favorite question, which is how does Bob define leadership?
Bob: Nicole, I love that question. My definition would be leadership is about meaningfully involving others in reaching the destination. In other words, leadership is about team it’s not about doing it by yourself. But it’s it’s about involving others. As you would guess even from the name of my blog. It’s it’s leading leadership is leading with questions. That’s how you involve others. You say, Nicole, what do you think we might do to reach the goal? And you involve others and that way a leader is hearing not just their own thoughts, but they’re hearing the thoughts of the whole team.
Nicole: Yeah. And that’s how we get the genius out of the team. I mean, that’s why you hired these people to help you think about things. Right. That’s fantastic. I love it, yeah. And I love the part where you said meaningful. Will you just kind of tap on that a little bit meaningful. What do you mean by pretty mean by meaningful anyway?
Bob: Oh, Nicole, you are great at asking questions. You picked up on that word. For me another words. There’s sometimes you can be just using something that you say, okay, this kind of makes people feel good. And it’s it’s almost like manipulation. But when it’s meaningful, it’s like when I’m curious about what people think. I’m curious about the ideas that my team has on how we could reach the goal faster, better, that kind of thing. And so that curiosity means that when you ask, you genuinely want to hear you’re not just asking to make them feel good. But you’re you’re asking, and then you’re listening, you’re listening that their ideas and so many times a leader, when you ask a whole team ideas, you will hear ideas better than what you thought, or as collaboration starts, they build on each other.
And the end product, sometimes you would say, if somebody said, Who came up with that, you’d pause and think the team that we were building on each other. It was like none of us could actually claim. Yep, that was completely my idea. You know, Bob shared and Nicole said, hey, I like that. But if we also did, and say, wow, yeah, that thing, you know, and I’m thinking and over here, Joe says, and we could also do, and suddenly you’ve got an incredible idea, because the leader was willing to ask and then listen and build And to me, that’s the meaningful part.
Nicole: Yeah, I totally I totally agree. So we’ve talked about this question a little bit already, but the question is What are the most important skills of a successful leader? So obviously asking really great questions. And then if you ask the question, you better be ready to listen the answer. So could you kind of elaborate on what other skills you see that leaders really need to work on? Those are the two biggies. And we’re gonna get into them deep, deep. But what else do you think?
Bob: Absolutely. When you ask people about the best leader they’ve ever had, they almost always include listening. He or she was a great listener. I think another skill is just curiosity. It’s curiosity that that motivates you to ask questions of what do you think, and many others and then listen. And so the skill of curiosity, I also am a huge fan of strength Finder. And the whole concept that our greatest potential for growth is actually to focus on developing our strengths, not overcoming weaknesses.
And so I think a leader who does two things, first of all, knows their own strengths and focuses on developing those, but also understands that for their whole team, and so you’re looking at your whole team, and you’re wanting to know, what are their strengths? How can we make use of those strengths, and in a sense, where we have everybody working in their area of strength, and that together, the team is well rounded, because you get everybody in their strength? Yeah, you know, football would be a classic example.
But when we look around our conference table, based on body size, we can’t automatically see where somebody’s strengths are. But but on a football team, I mean, you want a quarterback who’s strong, it’s that. But if you were to take the quarterback and duplicate that person, you know, clone them 21 times. So every player offense and defense would be an exact replica of the quarterback, that team would never win. Because while he is a great quarterback, most quarterbacks are terrible at tackling, or blocking, most of them could never get kick a field goal. But nor do we want them to do those things.
We want other players who are the linemen, the wide receivers, the running backs, the specialists, it’s a field goal kicker. But another thing of leadership is focusing on that. And Nicole, what excites me is that when somebody is working there, you have strength, they’re often three to 10 times more productive than when they’re working in area, that’s not a strength. Now we can all do anything. But if I’m asked to do something outside my strengths, it requires a lot of energy, a lot of focus determination. But in my area of strength, it just flows. And Nicole, kind of a secret
Nicole: Oh I love secrets.
Bob: Is when you let somebody work in the area of strength, they actually think they’ve kind of conned the organization. It’s kind of like if everybody knew how easy this is for me, and how much fun this is, they might not want to pay me. But the other secret is, Nicole, how much more do you have to pay people? If you let them work in their area of strength? Nothing.
Nicole: You don’t have to pay any extra right?
Bob: Now, of course, pay people fairly. But what I’m saying is, when you let somebody work in their area of strength. It’s like they love it. When they’re thinking about should I leave assuming they’re being paid fairly? They think no. I get to do what I love here. And so that’s a whole important leadership thing. And then another thing I’m excited about is from the Covey group, the Four Disciplines of Execution.
Nicole: And it’s fantastic.
Bob: Yeah, there’s a quote, I think, from Harvard Business Review that 90% of all strategic plans fail because of poor execution. And and of course, our MBA programs focus on a lot on strategic planning, not very much on execution. And that’s why the covey organization when they focused on the Four Disciplines of Execution, because at the end of the day, it’s not the plan, if it doesn’t get executed, the thing that’s valuable is actually landing that plane on the deck and in reaching those goals. Nicole those would be some of mine.
Nicole: Oh, those are fantastic. Yeah. So he’s giving you a couple of things you need to go read, which is you need to get the Strengths Finder book. You need to get to the back of that. rip out your little coupon to take the assessment online. If you haven’t done this work so far. Fantastic. So it’s a little bit of a self assessment. You know, Bob, I have a coaching methodology called SHINE. And the first the S is self assessment.
So I’m hearing that you also believe in self assessment, and then the the excellent leader takes what that person has in their strengths, as Bob just said, and puts them to work. Okay, so you might want to write that down. Figure out the strengths of my whole team, buy a book for everybody. Get that on your list. Also, don’t forget to buy Bob’s book. What? Hold on Bob, we don’t even buy your book, do we? We don’t talk about people can get him all these goodies. We talked about that pretty quick skinny second?
Bob: Well, my blog leadingwithquestions.com. And all of my books are free ebooks. Go there and request the download 1, 2, 3 or all four. Two of them are also audio books now. Great Leaders Ask Questions. And now that’s a great, and then leaders. Gosh, I get mixed up on my own title here. Great. Downloadable is free mp3 audio books. And then everything’s available in Spanish. Also simplified in traditional Chinese, French, and Polish and soon Portuguese will be available.
Nicole: Again, this guy is global. I totally love it. I totally love it. Well, yeah. So I think all of those skills that you talked about are absolutely essential. Execution is definitely where it’s at. I know that in this book. Now, That’s a Great Question. You share that you make a confession in here. Is that correct? Will you confess to the whole world on this podcast, a confession you made in the book?
Bob: Nicole, someone once said, you know, confession is good for the soul and bad for the reputation, but I’ll risk it.
Nicole: Go for it, go for it. We’ll love you anyways.
Bob: The first chapter of Now That’s a Great Question is a confession. And the confession is that for most of my career, I was a benevolent dictator. And I share this for several reasons. First of all, you know, some of your listeners or whenever I speak, I said some people think well, Bob must just naturally have the DNA of leading with questions. And so uh, you know, of course, that comes easy. But the DNA that I actually have, sometimes I also share that I’m a charter member of TA, and people say TA and they haven’t heard of it. And I said, well, maybe you’ve heard of a Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, TA is tellers anonymous. We go to our meetings, and I stand up and introduce myself.
My name is Bob, I’m a teller. Now that’s my natural DNA. And of course that’s fictitious, but after I speak, usually there are several audience members that come up and say, Bob, I’m also a charter member of TA. Well, most of my career, I’m a benevolent dictator, because not out of evil intent. But my only paradigm of leadership was that a leader needs to direct his or her staff on what to do IE a leader needs to tell staff what to do. Now the benevolent part came, Nicole, I grew up in a home where I was taught to say please, and thank you. So if you were on my staff, Nicole, I would have never said Nicole, go do this.
I would have said, Nicole, you know, this week, we’re working on such and such and it would be really great if you could please do this. And when you did, I expressed appreciation. Nicole, thank you. Fantastic job or at the next staff meeting. Nicole stand up, you all need to hear what Nicole did. Thank you, Nicole. And I don’t want to suggest that that was like totally ineffective. We got a lot of things done. But in 2006 I discovered a book. Nicole perhaps like you I eat books for breakfast. And and you know, we buy a lot of books and and I didn’t realize when I bought Leading with Questions by Dr. Michael Marquardt, that it would forever change my leadership and actually set even a new direction for my leadership.
But as I read that book, for the first time in my life, I saw another paradigm of leadership. And that is that a leader who leads with questions, and the book was filled with stories and questions that you could use. And it was like, why has anyone ever shared this with me? I began to teach out of the book, and great response, I was ready on our leadership development team. And a few years later in 2012, when I decided to start a blog and get into social media, I asked well, Nicole, I didn’t want to do just another leadership blog, there would have been nothing wrong with that. But I asked myself the question, was there a niche of leadership I could blog on? And as soon as I had that question, it was like, well, of course, it’d be something to do with is leading with questions. So that’s the confession.
Nicole: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And so even a dictator can get turned around. Alright, so that’s great news. Okay. Some people say my boss will never change. But what I just heard is, maybe you go to Bob Tiede’s website and get his books you could gift them to your leader, that’d be an awesome thing to do.
Bob: Great idea.
Nicole: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, um, you talk about 30 seconds, it’s possible to learn to ask good questions in 30 seconds. Is that what your claim is in the book?
Bob: Nicole that is. You know, again.
Nicole: Well tell me about that. Yeah. And so not only can you give them the book, but you can you can teach them to ask good questions in 30 seconds. Let’s hear about this.
Bob: Right now. For you Nicole. I know you do ask great questions. But, you know, whenever I speak, I have a sense from the audience that a lot of people would like to learn to lead with questions, but they imagine they’d have to go get a master’s degree in quest analogy. You know, it’s kind of like a nice idea. But you know, being a brain surgeon, and making lots of money would be a nice idea, but probably not going to happen for most of us. And so I love to ask the audience who here would like to learn to lead with questions in 30 seconds. Nicole, almost every hand goes up. I see Nicole’s hand, and if you’re in the audience, I say, Nicole, come on up here.
So here we go. And then once you’re out, I go back to the audience and say to someone have a watch with a second hand to be our timer to see if we can actually get this done in 30 seconds. So you got that too. And then call I say to, in your case, Nicole, I say, you know, I picked you out of the audience because I sent you have a photographic memory. All you’re going to have to do is to hear my four favorite questions one time, and you’ll have a memorize. Now often they look a little nervous, like I don’t think I have a photographic memory. But I say trust me, I think you do. I say timer are you ready? Here we go. Nicole, here’s my first favorite question. What do you think? Second. What else? Third. What else? Fourth. What else? Nicole, do you have them memorized?
Nicole: I do!
Bob: Can you share them with us?
Nicole: I can. My question is Bob, what do you think? What else? What else? And what else? Did I do well?
Bob: There you go. And usually, usually, the timer says we got it done in about 20 seconds. So we beat the 30. And then I follow this by saying, you know, audience members, I see some of you are just a little skeptical. Like you can’t ask somebody, what do you think what else? What else? What else? And I said, well, of course not in that rapid fashion. But you’re asking a staff member one on one, what do you think we might do about and it’s some topic, and then you listen? And when they pause? You say, wow, what else? And Nicole, you know so often when anybody else says hey, what do we think. We instinctively roll out kind of that first answer to see how they treat it? And if I asked Nicole, what do you think about and you roll out that first answer. And I said when I call that stupid, but everyone knows that. You’re sorry, you answered it all.
Nicole: That’s for sure.
Bob: Wow. What else? You’ll give me more. And when you pause again and I say, Nicole, I’m taking notes, please continue. This is so good. What house and you’ll give me more. And what I found is that it’s actually when you ask the third and fourth question that you get to their gold nugget, their very best thought and they call when I when I began to realize this, I realized that so often, even when I had asked somebody, what do you think? And listen to that first answer. But I never asked what else that often I bet I was like that proverbial gold miner who mined all his life got within six inches of the gold vein and quit. It’s like don’t stop mining. Ask that what else and what else and and you know, when when somebody asks us a question, and we give that first answer and they say wow, this is good. What else? Well, we kind of relaxed we appreciate that they’re appreciating our thinking.
And and we’ll give them more. And back to learning to lead in 30 seconds. For a leader who’s always been a teller. If in their next meeting one on one with a staff member or the next meeting at their conference table with a whole team, whatever the issue on the table is, they’ll just lean forward and say, Hey, what do you think we might do about? And then listen? And when there’s the pause, wow, what else? In a pause and what else? Well, that leader truly will be moving from a teller to learning to lead with questions in 30 seconds. And that those four questions Nicole are my absolute four favorite questions.
Nicole: I absolutely love it. All right. So I hope you people are taking notes. You know, Nicole is all about taking the notes. So please write that down. Again, go to Bob’s website, download these, the book. Let me hold it up again. Now, That’s a Great Question. It’s right in here, everything he’s talking about. Really important. Okay. So in another chapter, you talk about learning to listen in eight seconds. So now we’re going from 30 to eight. So far, we have a 38 second investment and this whole thing. So I know all of you listening can do this. Bob, tell me about that.
Bob: Well Nicole, is there a sport when you think of eight seconds, does that bring up any sport in your mind? You talked about wanting to be a Texan and big hair cowboy boots.
Nicole: Bull riding.
Bob: You got it. And even for somebody who’s not a fan, if you’ve ever, you know, just flipped channels and stayed there a little bit, a bull rider to have a qualified ride has to stay on the bull for eight seconds. And eight seconds could seem to us like such a short time, but to a bull rider it’s an eternity. And if you watch the sport at all, you realize that like 80% of the bull riders are knocked off in less than eight seconds. And they call we’re talking about professional bull riders, not Nicole or Bob trying to get on a bull. In fact we’re too smart to do that.
But they get knocked off. Well. You’re wondering where am I going with this? Well, here’s what’s really fascinating. When we ask questions, most of us will only wait two or three seconds for an answer. And if the other person doesn’t answer our question, in two or three seconds, we will either re ask the question, ask a different question, answer the question ourselves or just move on. And the curious thing is with no self awareness of what we’ve just done, because you see to wait eight seconds would seem like an eternity. We’re kind of like that bull rider. That silence knocks us off.
And so the key to being a better listener, is to ask your question. And then you know, keep comfortable eyesight not intense, just comfortable, relax and count to yourself silently. 1001, 1002. Nicole, there’s times I’ve gotten to 1030. But the longer your silence, the better their answer. Now, of course, it depends on the question. If I was at your office and Nicole, which way to the men’s room what you would answer that in two or three seconds. But if I said, Nicole, I’m curious. What might you say is one of has been one of your greatest failures that led to one of your greatest successes. If you’ve never been asked that question before, it’s unlikely that you’d begin to answer in two or three seconds.
But if I’ll give you the gift of silence, and just relax and wait, and 8, 10, 15 seconds, somewhere in there, Nicole will begin to answer and I will get a great gift of wisdom of hearing the story of a failure that led to a success. And so there’s the principle. Ask your question, give them the gift of silence. Count to yourself those eight seconds or more? Yes, it’ll feel like an eternity but stay on that bull. Don’t let silence knock you off.
Nicole: I absolutely love it. Okay, I totally agree. Yeah, you’ve got to create space. And I’m also kind of hearing you say like, create a safe space for people to be vulnerable. Right? So I’m not before I even start considering this very powerful question. You’ve asked me, I’m going is this safe for me to share? I mean, I gotta get past my fair of sharing. That takes at least five seconds or more. So I love that. Okay, thanks. Fantastic. Okay, so um, we talked about lead with questions. It’s in multiple languages have questions that you’ve picked up along the way? If that’s what you’ve put together? In your book, The, let’s see, great leaders ask great leaders to ask questions, or do you have a list of questions that people could use in their conversations with people at work?
Bob: Well, I do in this book, there’s over 100. The subtitle is a fortune 100 list. Now, Nicole, rather than just here’s a list of 100 questions, wouldn’t be anything wrong with that. But I find lists of questions all by themselves. It may just be Bob’s perspective. But to me, it’s a little book like a little bit like laying out the ingredients for making chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Yep, there’s all the ingredients. But what motivates me to chocolate chip cookie is when Nicole bakes them, and they’re coming out of the oven and it’s like Nicole, can I have one or, or more? And what I found does that with questions is store the story behind the question or about the question or how the questions used.
So all 100 questions in this book are wrapped in little stories that give them context. And I mean, an example. Captain D. Michael Abrashoff off one of our Navy commanders when he took over command of the USS Benfold, one of our modern warships. However, the Navy ranks morale of some three or 400 navy vessels, we have morale on the USS Benfold was the lowest of all ships. When he took over 18 months later, morale on that ship re measured was the highest of all ships in the Navy. And upon taking command. The first thing Captain Abrashoff did was they have 300 15 minute meetings with 300 sailors on that ship one on one. And he asked him three questions. Nicole have I created enough curiosity that you’d like to know what the three questions were?
Nicole: Absolutely. And this is a book correct?
Bob: Nicole, you’ll love this, because you’ll have these memorized as soon as you hear them. All right. Yes, these sailors one on one. What do you like best about this ship? What do you like least? What would you change if you could, and he listened. And perhaps at the end of the first day, maybe you’d only had 10 to 20 of these meetings, he had a lot of meetings left to go. But there was a buzz on the ship, the new captain’s different. He actually wants to know what we think. And then Nicole it didn’t take long and he’s hearing things. And he’s thinking what what do you mean, that’s not being done on a ship? We’re gonna fix that. But guess what? When he begin to announce changes, guess who he credited with the ideas?
Nicole: Ah, his team, his crew.
Bob: The sailors he heard them from he didn’t say I’m gonna make this change. Thank you, Nicole. All Thank you, Sam. Thank you Ben. Great idea. I heard from these three sailors that we’re going to implement, gave them credit. And it’s not really surprising why 18 months later, morality increased. But Nicole, when you introduced me, you didn’t share this about me. I’m a farm boy from South Dakota. I like low hanging fruit. And one of the greatest things about leading with questions is so many of the greatest questions are so simple. What do you think? What else? What else? What else and Captain Abarshoff what do you like best about this ship? I mean, you could use that in any organization with your staff. What do you like best about our company? What do you like least? What would you change if you could? And listen, and you’re going to hear as a leader here incredible things. But it’s like those are questions all of us can use.
Nicole: 100% 100%. I have a favorite question. The most amazing question that I have ever been asked, Would you like to know about that?
Bob: Nicole. One of my favorite questions to ask is what is the greatest question you’ve ever been asked? So Nicole, I am all ears on this.
Nicole: Okay, so I got my coaching certificate way back in 2007. But when I finally got myself in a position to go back to school, and got my undergrad done, and I thought, oh, I gotta get this master’s degrees done, or I’ll never read these big fat books and write all these papers. I’ll just keep going. So I took another coaching course and I thought it’s time to you know, brush up your skills. It’s been about 14 years and so I took the class and it was about executive coaching and the professor said, here’s the first question. I asked everybody in a coaching session. And the question is, what is it like to experience you? And I took that question, I put it in my toolbox and put it in my pocket. And I’ve been using it ever since.
And Bob, it kind of pushes people, but they’re like, oh, I’ve never been I’ve never thought about that before. And you have to give them the eight seconds for sure. Or a longer maybe the 30 seconds you were talking about to let them really think about what is it like to experience them because really, as an executive, as a leader, people need to be aware of, you know, what’s it like to be in the room with you, because we can’t get to the strategy. If we don’t like or appreciate or understand the leader in front of us. That’s the first gate you got to get through in order to get the job done. So what do you think of my question. I got it from Kathleen O’Connor. I’ll give her credit. That’s her question.
Bob: Nicole, I’ve written it down. It is a new question to me. And I absolutely love it. And Nicole I have an instant request. Okay, I am always looking for guest post authors for my blog. And I would maybe you’ve already written a blog post around this question. But I would absolutely love for you to do a guest post for my blog. Yes, I’m putting you on the spot. You can answer later. But to share that,
Nicole: I’ll do it.
Bob: With all of my subscribers, it’d be fantastic. Absolutely love it.
Nicole: Okay, you got it. I’ll do it. I’ll absolutely do it for sure. All right. Well, let me ask you this question about leadership. You know, I’m hearing clearly that we have to have these one on ones. I don’t think again, back to your comment about the MBA programs. We’re looking at strategy. But like there’s the discipline of the execution you talked about from Covey’s work, but like there’s this whole idea of just being comfortable enough to sit down with people and have a conversation right up, you got to be able to do that. What’s the biggest challenges facing leaders today? And how might questions play into that? What do you see out there as you’re working with different organizations at Cru? What what are they experiencing? And how does your philosophy fit in?
Bob: Nicole another just fantastic question. My friend, Cheryl Bachelder, who was CEO of Popeye’s chicken, wrote the book Dare to Serve. And in her book, she asked, how well do you know your staff? And I think one of the challenges is, is making staff feel valued, making them feel known is probably the word. And Patrick Lencioni. In his book, Three Signs of a Miserable Job said one of the signs is working somewhere where you’re not known. They don’t know your story, they may have a hard time remembering your first name. And it’s easy to leave a job like that.
Well, back to Cheryl Bachelder’s book. She said, Do you know the three or four events that image shaped their lives? And when I heard that question, it has become one of my favorite questions. It’s just asking, what are the three to four events that have most shaped your life? And, Nicole, I’ll never forget the first time I asked it. I was actually I just had read it out of the book an hour later, I’m coaching one of my colleagues in Canada, who is the Associate leadership development director.
And I’ve known Neil since 2007. And I think I know his whole story. I just think it’ll be interesting, which of all the things he will say are the three or four. And I was wrong. Neil started by saying, well, Bob, have I have I ever shared the story with you that my birth father died when I was nine months old? And I said, no. I don’t know that story. He said, well, my mother, you know, later remarried and the man who’s really my stepfather is a man who in my heart is my dad. But he said it’s so often been shared with me, even recently, again, that in the final weeks of my birth father’s life, he knew he was dying.
He was in a big bed at home. And every day he would ask to hold me. And as he would hold me, he would pray over me that God, the Heavenly Father would be a father to this little boy. And Neil begin to have tears and I begin to have tears. We were on Skype. And Neil said, Bob, I really believe that. The first thing that marked my life, the first event was my birth father’s prayers. He said, I think I came to know Christ because of him. His prayers, he said, I think I serve them today because God honored prayers.
And and I thought, wow, a relationship that was already good within like a few minutes went deeper. And I assure people that every time you ask the answer won’t be as emotional as that one was. But it’s always fascinating. And so to ask a question that helps people to feel known. Well, it solves that problem Lencioni said about working at a place where they don’t know your story. So effective leadership that I that I love to share with people.
Nicole: Yeah, and you know what I also kind of heard like it underneath that was like, if you do ask people that question, you’re gonna find out how resilient they are. And like, one of the things we need in our chaotic vuca world that we are in is people who are resilient. And I think sometimes people forget that they’re resilient. And if you ask them to recall times, where they were resilient, though, oh, I am a resilient person, I can overcome big obstacles. So I think that’s wonderful. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Okay, well, we are about out of time. And I might just have to have you come back and play with me again, I’ll send you another prize in the mail. I probably won’t have to, but I would. So let me ask you this question. If you were mentoring a single special listener right now, a leader that really wants to do well, somebody who might want to get promoted somebody who, you know, finds himself in a tough spot and wants to get out of it. What one piece of leadership advice would you give them? Leave our listeners with that one special piece of advice.
Bob: President Calvin Coolidge once said, no one ever listened themselves out of a job. To become a better listener, to listen to people, and of course with that at times being curious, asking them questions, but then listening. And it’s all sorts of questions, but it’s open questions and kind of another version is, here’s the difference. Nicole, I could say how was your day? Or I can say, Nicole, tell me about your day. And seem, so so similar. But afterwards, it says how is your day always fine. Nicole, tell me about your day. When they call starts with breakfast and takes me all the way through. I’m going to hear so much more by just having said tell me about your day. And so those combinations, ask and listen. And Nicole something I’ve seen you do effectively, just even in this interview, you picked out a word that I’d said and said, tell me more about that. Expand on that. And that’s a great thing to do.
Nicole: Awesome. Awesome. I totally love it. And so what you just shared the part about tell me versus did you. I absolutely adore that. And what I say when I’m I’m teaching people about asking good questions, or how to coach their people. I call that an inquiry. You know, it’s more like inquiring minds want to know, right? more deeply than a very simple answer. So I love tell me that’s actually my crutch phrase, when I can’t think of the question I want to ask. I just tell me more about that.
And, and people will definitely tell you more. I think, you know, we were also trained growing up, you know, I love what you said about your you’re told to say please, and thank you, I was too and you’re welcome. And all that, you know, use your manners. I think too, we were kind of cautioned as children sometimes to, you know, speak when you’re spoken to. And you know, you know, be very careful about dominating the conversation and that kind of thing. So we kind of shut down, right, like, if I’m going to ask you questions, you don’t want to take up too much of my time. Yeah, you know, so.
So I don’t want to, you know, expound on it. But like, the more you say, what else what else? What else is like, Oh, this is again, a safe place for me to really speak what’s on my mind. Dare I say that on my heart or in my soul? Right, that I just really want to share, I want to be authentic. So I think that all of your techniques you’ve shared are just absolute genius. So Bob, just to kind of tie a bow on this. Will you tell everybody again, where they can go and download all of these amazing tools that you’ve shared, and then how they find out more about you.
Bob: Just go to my blog, leadingwithquestions.com. Just run those words together, leadingwithquestions.com. Up at the top, you’ll see a place where you can click and it’ll take you to the resource page where you can request the download of one or all of the resources and whatever language you prefer. And while most of your listeners may prefer English, they may have friends colleagues that would prefer one of the translated copies.
But also then when you go there near the bottom is a place where you can subscribe and join all my friends, who every Monday and Thursday into their inbox comes what I call turnkey ready questions that you can immediately turn around to ask colleagues or staff or clients or prospects or friends or family. And subscribing is free. And you’ll be joining leaders in 190 nations who are focused at improving their ability to lead with questions. Nicole, thank you. This has been just a fantastic conversation.
Nicole: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I’m so grateful to you, Bob. People, go to the website right now stop what you’re doing. Pull the car over, go to the website, download the downloadables and get the goodies in your email box. I have a little box in my mail client, it says Bob, and I read it and I drag it over there. So I have it all organized. So when I need some good questions, I’m ready to go. Thank you so much for being here for the Vibrant Leadership podcast. Have a vibrant day.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk.
