Leaders ask the right questions

“the role of the modern CEO is not to have the right answers, but to ask the right questions and trust the team and the organisation to answer them for the business.”

The role of the modern CEO is not to have the right answers, but to ask the right questions and trust the team and the organisation to answer them.

Do you have all the answers for your people?

I Am prompted to muse on this by a blog from my friend Jeff Raker, copied in full below. Before that, though, a few musings of my own.

Are you the person your people come to for answers? If so, is it answers they seek, or is it your permission?

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, is famous for responding to a request for an answer to a problem with: “I don’t know, what do you think?”. When the member of the team gives an answer, he may often then say “Make it happen. You have full authority”. For more on Nadella, see this earlier post.

Jeff goes into this in different ways, but to me the crux of this is simple. If you expect of yourself that your role is to have all the answers, then what limits are you placing on them, their potential and the potential of your business?

Recently I talked to a CEO of a large company with big ambitions for the coming years and so many and new problems to solve. I mooted to them that the role of the modern CEO is not to have the right answers, but to ask the right questions and trust the team and the organisation to answer them for the business.