“It’s worse than getting everyone on the same page. Some of my people aren’t in the same book.”
–Overheard at a club luncheon
Here is a secret: Effective leaders don’t manage people. They manage questions and let the questions manage the people. The more skilled a leader is at using questions, the more effective will be his or her leadership.
What makes a really great team?
I have been part of sports teams, volunteer teams, ad hoc emergency teams, product launch teams, international event production teams, political, environmental and social action teams. To name a few.
What do all highly effective teams have in common?
(Esprit de corps is important. But enjoying being on the team is not sufficient for success.)
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Every individual is a key player
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Every individual owns the team’s goals
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They think synergistically in terms of connecting of ideas, resources and people
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They ask a lot of questions and pay attention to what the others have to say because they require clarity
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They “play off of” and inspire each other
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They share a common picture of where they are going
The Question-Assisted Leadership™ program includes all this and more.
I created the Question-Assisted Leadership™ program (QAL) because I have seen fragmentation and distractions, indifference and outright hostility squash the efforts of a lot of businesses.
I created this program because it gives a manager or business owner access to tools for creating a more stimulating environment for meetings of every sort. And the people involved tend to welcome the addition.
The QAL program makes it easy for a team to learn the basics of why, when and how to use questions. One commonly experienced outcome is that the team sees immediate positive results. That outcome is highly motivating for a team to continue developing question driven problem solving skills.
“I have been through enough corporate training to recognize ‘frou-frou’ training models that cost a ton, load up staff with big binders that collect dust, and everyone sighs in relief when the trainer is out the door! Question-Assisted Leadership™ is not one of those. We thought we were good before (and we were). Now we are even better! Robert Bystrom and Question-Driven Leadership™ specialize in individual and work group skill development that uses very practical and efficient concepts.”
Connie Shannon
Owner, Fairhaven Village Inn
Bellingham, WA
Can you imagine everyone in your organization looking forward to meetings?
Back when we were Collective Intelligence Solutions, LLC, Question-Assisted Leadership™ was featured in Business World Spring 2011 as the leading voice of Collective Intelligence in action.
The editor of Russell Bedford Business World Quarterly realized that Collective Intelligence is an emerging field so he wanted to find whoever was leading the development of principles and business applications. He found us and was relieved to find a company that not only knew what collective intelligence is, but had developed proprietary processes to achieve consistently high marks for their clients.
Still today, many consulting firms use the phrase “collective intelligence” to refer to some vague, high level cooperation that their clients can achieve without knowing there is actually such a thing as the synergy of people thinking together and engaging their combined mental capacity and life experience to solve problems.
All of the Question-Assisted Approach™ applications and programs share the theoretical foundation of the Question-Assisted Mind™. Read a descriptive article, “The Revolutionary Theory of Question-Driven Intelligence” to understand the far-reaching implications of this work.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation to find out how Question-Driven Leadership™ might make the elements that make up your organization operate more in concert.
(You will never brain storm again!)