Life has a tendency to throw challenges and problems at us as we move through life, most likely many times over. They may relate to business, relationships, health, wealth, or something else. As we face each problem, we will search for a solution, we will look for answers. Pretty obvious right?
Adding to the challenge itself is that we often don’t see the actual core problem, we see the symptoms or the effect. We are generally really poor at identifying the core underlying problem – the cause. It’s a waste of time addressing the symptom as the core problem, or the cause will remain.
The real challenge is to ask the right questions. Asking powerful quality questions is the secret to finding the solution to any problem we face. The higher the quality of the question we ask, the higher the quality of the answer we will find. Our brain is good like that.
I think most people realise our brain is very powerful and that can be incredibly empowering or disempowering depending what we ask of it. Whenever we ask a question of ourselves, our brain will find an answer even if it has to make it up. If you ask a dumb question, you are likely to get a dumb answer. For example, you lose a customer and you ask yourself “Why can’t I keep my customers?” Your brain may come up with something like “because you’re a rubbish salesman”. However if you were to ask yourself what can I learn from this? Or how can I do better next time? Your brain will identify a much more empowering and useful answer.
In business, inspiring leaders ask themselves and their teams many quality questions; questions that inspire a wider scope of thinking, open the discussion up to a wider range of possibilities and opportunities. If you or a member of your team ever thinks or says they don’t know the answer – ask a better question.
As a coach, one of my greatest skills is asking challenging questions to help clients expand their scope of thinking and to help them open their minds to greater possibilities. Finding the right question leads the client to the cause of their problem so they can move forward and build a path to even greater success.