Questions can help unlock someone’s thinking, but not all questions achieve that. This Reader explains what makes powerful questions different.

Every day, we ask questions in both our personal and professional lives. We ask questions to gather information, to check in on progress, to understand a scenario, or to know someone better. The list of why we ask questions is endless. However, most of the questions do a basic job and rarely do they do more. Most of us have been trained to analyse, advocate for our opinions, and respond; to come to conversations with answers rather than genuine curiosity. And so our questions tend to reflect that; efficient, directional, often carrying the answer inside them before the other person has had a chance to think.

But every question carries an assumption, and that assumption either expands or limits what becomes possible in the conversation that follows. Not all questions are equal, and the difference is often about what the question assumes, and what it makes possible. Leaders and teams that understand this, and who build it as a real discipline, tend to be the ones who create environments where people think better, decide better, and do their best work.

‼️ Why ask more powerful questions?

• They unlock someone’s own thinking.
• They help build trust faster than simply providing answers does.
• They surface assumptions before they become problems.
• They make you a better thinker, not just a better leader or colleague.
• They help people get unstuck, without you having to push.
• They surface what everyone is thinking but nobody is saying.

Better questions produce better thinking. Better thinking produces better decisions. Better decisions produce better outcomes.

As a leader, you sometimes feel like you need to have all the answers, all the advice, in order to look strong, knowledgeable and confident. But oftentimes it’s the opposite. When you find ways to help your team share their knowledge, gain strength, and build confidence, you are truly leading your team.

Examples of everyday scenarios and how a single question can shift a conversation from ordinary to genuinely useful.

Leading within your team

• You want to help a team member who has been underperforming improve going forward.

  • Ask ⤵

    • What’s been getting in the way, and what would make the biggest difference right now?
    • What part of your work feels most difficult at the moment, and what support would help?
    • What would doing your work well look like for you, and what would it take to get there?

  • Avoid Asking: Why haven’t you been meeting your targets/deadlines?

• You’ve seen real potential in a team member and want to help them unlock it.

  • Ask ⤵
    • What’s the work you do here that feels most alive to you and what would it look like to do more of that?
    • What would you work on if you knew you had full permission to try?

  • Avoid Asking: You have great potential and need to do more on the team. What more responsibilities can you take on?

• You want to understand why your team has been resistant to a new policy or organisational change.

  • Ask ⤵

    • What concerns you most about this change, and what would need to be different for it to work?
    • What would need to be true for this to feel like a good decision to you?
    • What are we, as leaders, not seeing about how this affects your work?

  • Avoid Asking: Why is everyone being difficult and resistant to change? This is for your benefit!

Working with your partners

• You are going through a rough patch with a community you have worked with for a long time and want to get to the root cause.

  • Ask ⤵

    • Since we started working together, what has changed for you, and what did you expect to change that hasn’t?
    • What have we done, or not done, that has made this feel harder than it used to?

  • Avoid Asking: Can you help us understand what the community’s concerns are?

• You want to make sure communities feel genuinely heard, not just consulted, at the onset of a project or programme.

  • Ask ⤵
    • Who in this community is most affected by this decision and isn’t in this room?
    • What would you need to see happen for you to feel this process was genuinely fair?
    • What are people saying outside this meeting that hasn’t been said in it?

  • Avoid Asking: We’ve shared the proposal and idea, does anyone have any questions?

• You want to ensure a donor truly understands your needs and you understand theirs.

  • Ask ⤵

    • What does success look like to you at the end of this partnership, and how does that compare to what it looks like for us?

  • Avoid Asking: What is needed from us by the end of this partnership?

• You need to have an honest conversation with a fellow NGO about a challenging partnership.

  • Ask ⤵
    • What’s working in how we’re collaborating that we should protect, and what’s quietly not working that we haven’t named yet?
    • What would a genuinely successful partnership between us look like two years from now?
    • What assumption did we each bring into this that hasn’t held up?

  • Avoid Asking: How do you think the partnership is going overall?

Begin the practice

The more you build this discipline, in your team meetings, your community engagements, your partnerships, the more you will find that the best thinking in the room rarely comes from the person with the most answers. We hope this Reader helps you ask better, listen more carefully, and lead with a little more curiosity than you did before.