Your job isn’t to have every answer. It’s to get the answers out of the people sitting around you.

LEADERSHIP

WHAT THIS MEANS

Nobody put you in charge because you know the most. The useful part of the role is getting what is already in the room out of the people sitting in it, since between them they almost always know more than you do about the actual problem. Pretending otherwise wastes all of that and makes everyone wait for you. Answers are cheap. Good questions asked in front of the right people are not.

In the next discussion, ask two people directly what they think before you say anything. Then use what they said and credit them.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Whose good idea have you not asked for yet?

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