Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask

Praise for Leading with Questions

When leaders ask questions and create organizational cultures that value questions great things happen. People engage, complex problems are solved, creativity is increased, and the whole organization learns faster and better. Leading with Questions provides a comprehensive and practical formula for helping your organization and yourself become more effective.
WALTER MCFARLAND, 2012 board chair, American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and coauthor, Choosing Change

Marquardt masterfully makes the most compelling case for questioning as an essential leadership skill for developing the leaders we need in the future.
MARILEE ADAMS, Ph.D., author, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life

Change begins with inquiry, and Leading with Questions jump–starts the process with its practical approach for leaders who want to develop and ask questions that provoke reflection, get meaningful information, and initiate action.
MARTIN B. KORMANIK, president and CEO, O.D. Systems

A brilliantly written, indispensable guide to help us each find our unique path through the art of asking questions.
DEBRA GMELIN, corporate director, the Leadership Institute, Humana, Inc.

Through the rich stories of the organizational leaders who lead with questions, Marquardt offers a wonderful tool to enable organizations to creatively transform the status quo and generate a corporate culture that succeeds!
MARY TOMASELLO, senior vice president, global HR and employee communications, PGI

Leaders everywhere will benefit from Leading with Questions. Michael Marquardt skillfully dissects the essence of leadership through the process of asking the right questions. This book belongs in your library.
RON SHEFFIELD, CEO, Organizational Sciences and Culture, Inc.

Introduction 1

Part I The Power of Questions

1 An Underused Management Tool 11

2 Benefits of a Questioning Culture 31

Part II Asking Questions Effectively

3 Why We Have Trouble with Questions 63

4 Asking the Right Questions 83

5 The Art of Asking Questions 103

6 Creating a Questioning Culture 129

Part III A Guide for Leaders on When and How to Ask Powerful Questions

7 Using Questions in Managing People 151

8 Using Questions to Build Teams 177

9 Using Questions to Solve Problems 199

10 Using Questions to Shape Strategy and Enable Change 213

Conclusion: Becoming a Questioning Leader 239

Resource A: Biographies of Leaders Interviewed 247

Resource B: Action Learning: A Powerful Training Program for Developing Questioning Leaders 255

Resource C: Resources for Training and Information on Questioning Leadership 271

Notes 275

Acknowledgments 283

About the Author 287

Index 291

Michael J. Marquardt is professor of Human Resource Development and International Affairs, as well as program director of the Executive Leadership Program at George Washington University. He also serves as president of the World Institute for Action Learning. Dr. Marquardt has trained more than 100,000 managers in nearly 150 countries at organizations including Marriott, Microsoft, Sony Music, Goodrich, Motorola, Nortel, Alcoa, Boeing, and Caterpillar, as well as the governments of Indonesia, Laos, Ethiopia, Zambia, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, Jamaica, Honduras, and Swaziland. He is the author of twenty–four books and over one hundred professional articles in the fields of leadership, learning, globalization, and organizational change.

Dr. Marquardt lives in the Washington, D.C. area and enjoys skiing, music, and traveling with his wife, four children, and nine grandchildren.