Up-Level Your Thinking by Asking Great Questions

Successful business owners strike a balance between thinking and doing.

Some owners get stuck when they lean more towards OVER thinking. (If that’s you, this will help: 4 Strategies to Overcome Over-Thinking.)

Others get overwhelmed when they focus too much on doing and don’t spend quite enough time engaged in quality thinking.

But if you’ve been running your business for a while, there’s a third trap, and it’s the sneaky one. You’re taking the time to think about your business. But you’re still thinking at the operational level instead of the leadership level.

You’re solving problems that belong to someone on your team. Or making calls that should never reach your desk.

The goal isn’t just to think. It’s to think at the altitude your role now requires.

Here are some questions to guide you in your “thinking time.”

Pick the category that feels most critical to your current situation and ask yourself the questions underneath.

Questions to help you free up your time and remove yourself as the bottleneck

1. What problem am I living with because I’m avoiding an uncomfortable conversation?

2. Where am I looking for shortcuts where none exist?

3. What am I deciding right now that someone on my team should be deciding by now?

4. What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

5. Which of my decisions are tattoos? Which are hats I’m treating like tattoos?

6. Where am I the bottleneck because I never actually gave someone the authority to handle it on their own?

7. What should I be doing that isn’t getting done because I’m spending too much time doing minor things?

8. What would have to be true for this business to run well without me in the middle of it?

Questions to help you get better performance from your team

9. Are my people asking me for permission, or reporting decisions they’ve already made? (One of those means I’m still the hub.)

10. What boundary could I set that would let someone own an area instead of checking with me on it?

11. Am I meeting with my team frequently enough? Are our meetings productive?

12. Do I have the right people doing the right things right?

13. Am I building capacity in my people?

Questions to help you grow your business and improve your financial results

14. Where am I spending money that doesn’t produce a return?

15. Am I making financial decisions by looking at scorecards or by flying by the seat of my pants?

16. Do I understand the numbers I’m getting from my accountant? If not, how is that impacting my business?

17. What resources (or skills) would I need to double my sales?

18. What differentiates us from our competition?

19. Is there a mismatch between what we offer and what our customers want to buy?

20. What’s the real constraint on our next stage of growth? Is it a people problem, a systems problem, or a me problem?

Asking better questions will get you better results

Sometimes I am asked about the meaning of W5 in W5 Coaching.

It refers to the 5 core “W questions”

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why

Questions are the foundation of the Socratic Method of teaching.

One of my most important jobs as a coach is to ask you good questions.

Because good questions prompt good thinking.

And when you think better, you get better results.

If you’d like some support from an experienced coach who knows exactly when to ask the right question, book 15 minutes on my calendar to chat about coaching: Book a call with John