The 10 Questions To Ask To Become A Better, More Informed Leader

šŸ™‹ā€ā™€ļø Marketing Unfiltered #8 - Why playing the game and asking better questions will help you to become the best leader you can be šŸ™‹ā€ā™€ļø

Happy Friday and welcome back to the Marketing Unfiltered newsletter, this week is #8.

Harry did a great job on Go Odd Or Go Home and thanks for the brilliant feedback on email and LinkedIn!

This week I jump back in and follow up on my first newsletter offering Why Playing The Game Is Essential For Marketing Leadersā€¦

Thank you for the lovely feedback, personal stories on why playing the game has been a challenge for you and how the article will help you. I loved receiving these emails and messages and was glad it helped. So I decided to introduce Nick Nicolas and how to use a series of questions to get to know each other and understand how peers are engineered to build better connections and create more wins.

Enter Nick The CPOā€¦

Have you ever had a colleague who you just donā€™t understand, you donā€™t get what makes them tick and can never predict how they will react in SMTs and leadership settings. 

Yes, we all have. This is a made-up Met Nickā€¦sorry Nicolas 

He goes by Nick to some but Nicolas to othersā€¦ image source: Unsplash

Nicolas is the (ā€œfictionalā€) rival we all go against around the boardroom table.

A number of questions I received from you, were based on the following question:

ā€œHow do I effectively connect with my colleagues when there have been disagreements or disconnections at the leadership team levelā€

More Layers To Execs 

If you have ever had exec training or been part of a company whoā€™s had an executive trainer, they tend to focus on opening up, sharing vulnerabilities and creating a safe space to share stores. 

Often what this set-up lacks is the understanding of what motivates and demotivates your leadership peers, it can be less about how people react to good and bad situations and it can under-index on seeing how peers went from A to B and how their team tackles hard problems and when you know they need support. 

Something I ask in my exec coaching and when I consult with C-Suites is a series of questions to understand my colleagues' motivations, itā€™s often over a few weeks and frequently in 1-2-1 sessions and informal settings over coffee etc.

Why? 

  • I want to understand what my peers have learnt from bad experiences and how these colleagues tackle good and bad times. 

  • I want to understand their impact, their team's performance zones and how to spot good and bad days to see how they might and will potentially react. 

  • I want to help peers with their EQ (emotional intelligence) 

  • Recognise their level of work IQ -- how they see what is good and bad work to them - this situation will apply when they judge you and your team(s) in leadership settings  

  • I want to observe how experts operate in their teams, including where they index on PQ (political intelligence) and when they are playing the game or have other incentives. 

Here are a variation of the 10 questions that will help you understand your colleagues and as a leadership team connect and engage with each other.

  1. What have you achieved in your career?
    Good for looking back and asking what and where they have made a real impact. You want to hear about how they speak, the sentiments they use and how they speak about themselves and others. This question enables colleagues to show off their IQ, EQ and PQ and for you to potentially connect to your career.

  2. What piece of work are you most proud of working here?
    Something you are never asked when you work somewhere is what work are you most proud of and why. I find this especially true of those who havenā€™t interviewed you or spent any time near your onboarding or proactively getting to know you.
    Sometimes it can be a big campaign, other times it's a cross-functorial project, and many times it's a huge project that took months to launch - you might be surprised by the answer you give in return.

  3. What do you want to achieve here at work? 
    Colleagues are all motivated by different goals, some will want to be profound, and others will be straight up and give you a revenue or Ā£/$/ā‚¬ number.
    This question will help you understand their motives, what drives them and how you could help them be successful. 

  4. What inspires you on a day you struggle to get out of bed to do good work?
    Everyone has those days, but on the days you struggle most are the day many show their true colours. This question helps you understand what good work looks like and where the threshold is set by them and for their team.
    Look out for non-answers as it will say as much about them as a well-thought-through answer. 

  5. What did your worst day of work look like here?
    You will be surprised at what a bad day or what a worst day looks like for your colleagues, especially in a leadership role. It could be having to fire someone, having to let go half a team or it could be a nightmare where the site had gone down the teams struggled to get it back up. Others will offer something trivial, the more insights the better but allow colleagues to be vulnerable and understand how it might compare to yours.  

  6. What did the best day of work look like here?
    I love seeing how much this answer varies between department leaders. Someoneā€™s best day can be team-driven, whilst others can be about nailing a presentation or delivering a piece of work that troubled them for weeks. Best and worst days are often aligned in answers and you will gain a huge sense of what makes someoneā€™s day when you know the top and bottom of their days.  

  7. Tell me about when you made a big work-related mistake and how you and your team learnt from it. -- And what was the lesson(s)? 
    This question is a beast for many leaders to unpack, many havenā€™t performed retros on big projects. It might take some time for them to consider what it was, however, the answers are always enlightening and what the team learns is vitally important. The ideal isnā€™t to judge, but, you can see if these mistakes resurface and if they have learnt from it.

  8. If you had to take 3 colleagues from 3 different departments to run a secret new business inside of the company, who would you take and why?
    This particular question is one that if you were asked might give you a nightmare 5 minutes. In leadership roles you are often disconnected from other departments, you might have heard your team talk about them or had experience with your colleagues positively or negatively talking about them so selecting individuals is difficult and knowing how to run a secret new initiative can seem impossible. This question is to understand how they are connected to the people, the performance and what they see as opportunities.

  9. If you were told to reduce your department by a third, what process would you take to do this?
    In the near future, this might be a question you are asked to perform, whether that is down to cost-cutting or performance issues or doing ā€œmore with lessā€. You want to understand how they think, how they consider the people in their teams and how they could operate in a truly challenging place.
    The better they can explain their process the better you can understand their way of working and the more you align in the future. If you hear something you donā€™t agree with or go against your values, this is the time to know when to speak up or be prepared in tense situations (this is where you index PQ).

  10. If you were to revisit one project to optimise for better success, what project would it be and why? 
    Another retrospective-based question is to understand how your colleagues can break down success, talk through their process and identify ways to improve performance whether that's people or processes.

How do you score your product and offering vs your peers?

Bonus Q: If you were to score where we are as a company and our product offering, where would you score us? Good Enough, Good, Better, Best, Greatest. 
My personal favourite question, this is a deliberate question to ask colleagues to demonstrate how they see the company as a whole, to show their understanding of the market and push your colleague to score the company that is hard and subconsciously placing a score on cross-functional successes. 

Applying The Right Q to Have The Right Level Of Impact

I enjoy seeing people act like scientists or bakers, I like to watch the process colleagues will go through to improve the final outcome and gain more confidence in future work. This unlocks the ability to apply the right levels of EQ, work IQ and when to apply more PQ. 

Think You Really Know Your Colleagues? 

If you believe you know your colleagues you can always attempt to answer before asking and see how it compares to your guesses. I bet they will vary.

Another hint will be to ask yourself these questions and see how your answers might vary when colleagues ask you in return.
Another exercise can be to ask your team members but be wary as your title may sway their answers as will their status within the department/team.

Good luck in the near future getting to know your peers, understanding their triggers, their motivations and how they show upā€¦ some will always surprise you, however, these questions will unlock many follow up conversations and alignment on cross-functional and company-wide successes.

Ā» Connect with me on LinkedIn or hit reply to chat about your experiences and if you will use any of these questions

We will land in your inbox on the 20th with How to Thrive in ā€˜25!

Have a great weekend and thanks,

Danny, Harry and Marketing Unfiltered Writers

PS. Remember if youā€™ve missed any previous newsletters you can enjoy ā†“

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