Listening without prejudice
In an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review, “Is Yours a Learning Organization?,” authors David Garvin, Amy Edmondson and Francesca Gino describe leadership that reinforces learning as a building block of organizational learning. Their perspective illustrates the idea that leaders influence organizational learning with their behavior. Organizations do not magically develop strong learning cultures; people within the organization create and nurture a learning culture by leading. Those leaders engage in active questioning and listening.
Many Wildfire readers are intensely interested in firefighter safety, and worldwide, safety experts widely accept that a questioning attitude at all levels of the organization represents a central tenet of a positive organizational safety culture. Leadership blogger George Ambler has written about how easily we can rush into our work without taking time to consider what the right work is, why we are doing it and its costs. In other words, particularly in action-oriented organizations, people regularly act without taking the time to consider the consequences or the effectiveness of their actions in their well-meaning rush to produce results. Unfortunately, we have seen repeatedly how this tendency gets wildland firefighters into trouble. High-reliability organizations, or HROs, avoid this tendency. People in these organizations step back, question assumptions and simplify reluctantly. Consequently, they produce thoughtful, purposeful action.
The popular leadership press also urges leaders to ask questions. I suggest an experiment: Conduct a web search for “leaders asking questions” and see how many job aids along the lines of “the top 10 list of questions all leaders should ask” you find. I'll give you a hint — there are a lot. I suspect we would agree that leaders should hone their situation awareness, involve and empower their people, and make well-informed decisions. Asking questions fosters all those outcomes. These ideas make one thing clear: If we want fire organizations that legitimately could be described as HROs with effective safety cultures, we would see people leading, in part, by asking many questions.
On the other hand, I have been noticing a troubling trend. People seem to have embraced the idea that demonstrated leadership involves a questioning attitude. Clearly, senior managers believe that if you want to show you are leading, you ask many questions. However, these would-be leaders too often seem to have only part of the equation. Yes, a leader wanting to maximize situation awareness, involve and empower followers, and make well-informed decisions must ask probing questions. But asking questions is just part of the job. A leader's questioning attitude only benefits the organization if the leader asks the right kinds of questions — and listens to the answers.
I recall a senior manager just peppering subordinate personnel with tough questions. I trust this person meant well and wanted to be seen as engaged and in the lead. However, the would-be leader made mistakes that Michael Marquardt, a professor of human resources and international affairs at George Washington University and author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask, describes as having negative effects on subordinates and interfering with effective communication.
This senior manager asked questions focused on why people did not or could not succeed, which forced subordinate personnel to feel threatened and become defensive. These questions shut down the free flow of information that could have uncovered opportunities to succeed and even clarified some misunderstandings. The nascent leader asked leading questions that sought very specific answers, left people feeling cornered and created the impression that the questioner had an agenda. From my perspective, these questions inhibited straightforward answers and stifled candid discussion. Too often, the questions sounded more like an interrogation rather than an effort to elicit information and understand the situation.
Coming back to our experts from the Harvard Business School, Garvin, Edmondson and Gino note that in learning organizations, leaders invite input from others in their discussions, actively question employees and listen to them — all in order to prompt dialogue and debate. This kind of two-way, give-and-take can prove uncomfortable for many would-be leaders. However, when a leader asks the right kinds of questions, listens to the answers and uses the information gained to make better decisions, people in the organization feel confident in their ability to contribute to the organization's learning and improvement.
Leaders must demonstrate, through their behavior, a willingness to engage in active questioning and listening, acceptance of alternative points of view, and a desire to spend time transferring knowledge and making informed decisions. An effective leader engages with people both by asking probing questions and by listening attentively.
Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service, and an adjunct instructor in leadership studies for Fort Hays State University. Follow him on Twitter @guidegroup or via LinkedIn.
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