“What would you try?” moves people further than “do it my way” ever will.
LEADERSHIP
WHAT THIS MEANS
Being handed a method produces execution at best. Being asked for one produces thinking, and thinking is what you actually want to grow in the people around you. Their answer will sometimes be worse than yours in the short term and better within a month, because they will have understood why it works.
Ask the question before you give the instruction, and mean it enough to sometimes use their answer. If their plan is workable but not ideal, let it run. Save your own method for the times when the cost of learning is genuinely too high.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Where do you insist on your own way out of habit?
MORE IN LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE
- A team doesn’t play to its best player. It plays down to whatever lazy thing everyone agreed to ignore.
- Your teammates won’t quote your pep talk. They’ll copy the way you tie your shoes when you’re losing.
- The way you train the new hire is how they’ll train the next one. You’re writing the handbook with your attitude.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.