Questions

Years ago I won a speech contest which started:”Questions, questions, questions ” At that time I did not realize how truly important questions were. It seems to me that as a society we are encouraged not to ask questions.

For example, on TV these days there is a commercial saying that the residents of BC should be helping other countries use cleaner burning natural gas as fuel. This sounds very altruistic, until you ask the question, how will the gas get to those countries? It will have to be by ocean tanker which poses its own environmental risk.

We carry that same avoidance into our work and our life. We have an employee who is performing poorly and we often don’t ask, why has that performance dropped? As the manager we may ignore the issue hoping it will fix itself, or we want to avoid confrontation until the problem becomes overwhelming. So two questions are at play here. What caused the employee’s performance to falter – a simple ask could resolve that. And the other is what is stopping you as manger from approaching the issue? Do you feel you have the skills? Do you feel comfortable in this aspect of your job? Those are all questions that need to be considered for the benefit of the employe and for your skills as manager.

In our personal life we often avoid the hard questions too. Our marriage is a bit flat, humdrum and we balk at having a talk with our spouse about changing things, perhaps because we are afraid of what the response might be. Yet the stress of not asking can be far more difficult than the results of a simple question.

Take your courage into your hands and start asking questions, you may be pleasantly surprised at the responses – and certainly they will be different from anything you have imagined.