Smart Questions - The Essential Strategy for Managers: Dorothy Leeds

Dear to any coach’s heart must be the role that questioning plays in a coaching conversation. In this book, the author uses her consultancy experience to demonstrate the value and the importance of asking good questions. Her contention is that good leaders, and those recognised as having real potential for leadership, are those who know how to ask the best questions. The book isn’t written for coaches – it’s aimed at a much broader management audience.

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Key themes and ideas

• Questioning is an immensely powerful tool. If you want to persuade, clarify, criticise, motivate, get information, negotiate, develop….use questions
• Before launching on your questions, get clear what you’re trying to achieve and think about how best to adapt your questions and your approach to the other person
• Make sure that your question gets noticed – give it space and weight; don’t lose it in amongst a lot of other stuff you’re saying
• Really listen to the response
• Evaluate the answer and ask any follow up questions
• And then do something with what you’ve heard and learned.

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Useful gems

• Leeds shows how to apply her questioning system to a range of situations, such as asking questions to help staff feel motivated about their job
• There’s a very sensible section on how to use questions to improve your recruitment process
• There are examples of some simple questions that a manager can use to prepare for delegating a task to a member of staff
• There are also some nice questions to help a manager to coach a team member to a solution
• The dozen or so questions that Leeds suggests you should ask yourself before embarking on a negotiation are very sound.

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Why I rate this book

• Yes, there are some tips in the book that are useful for a coach, but this is also a really straightforward resource to recommend to a coaching client who wants to get better at using questions to achieve things. For example, I often advise clients who want to make more of an impact in big meetings that good questions are an easier way of achieving that than trying to think up a statement of world-shattering importance. This book supports that view
• There are lots of mini self-awareness quizzes in the book to help managers to think through how well (or otherwise) they use questions now
• It’s packed with examples of good questions for a range of situations
• It’s very readable and practical
• It covers a wide range of situations.

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Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Penguin Putnam; Reprint edition (4 Feb 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425176592
ISBN-13: 978-0425176597
Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.2 x 2.3 cm

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