Excellence Foresight with Nancy Nouaimeh

Building Bridges with the Right Questions with Sean Grace

• Nancy Nouaimeh • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Ever wondered how the right question can ignite a spark of creativity or resolve a lingering conflict? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Sean Grace, an acclaimed communication consultant and author of "The Art of the Question." In this episode, you'll discover the transformative role of questioning in leadership, communication, and self-discovery. Sean draws from his extensive experience and philosophical teachings to demonstrate how strategic inquiry can enhance problem-solving and creativity. He reveals insightful questions that leaders can employ to dismantle barriers and inspire their teams, emphasizing the often-overlooked power of gratitude in effective leadership.

Creating a culture of inquiry within organizations isn't just beneficial; it's essential. We'll explore innovative techniques like "Q-storms," a method for generating questions that fosters creativity and collaboration. Sean underscores the importance of posing empathetic and constructive questions that empower teams rather than placing them on the defensive. With a focus on mastering the craft of questioning, we unpack strategies for leaders to harness the full potential of their teams through context-driven and solution-focused inquiries. Tune in to discover how the art of the question can serve as a catalyst for transparency, innovation, and unparalleled organizational growth.

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Nancy Nouaimeh:

I'm your host, nancy Noemi, and I'm thrilled to welcome here today with us Sean Grace. Sean is a communication consultant, author, coach and speaker with over 25 years of experience developing and training sales, marketing and leadership talent across diverse industries. His unique brand of business consulting is forged from his long career in media, advertising and the creative arts. Sean's track record of success as a consultant and talent development coach has earned him a reputation as a trusted advisor and trainer to some of the world's most innovative and successful organizations. So, sean, welcome. We're very pleased to have you with us here today.

Sean Grace:

Thank you so much for having me on your program today, Nancy. I appreciate that.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Thank you, and today is going to be a very special session. We're talking about a special book that Sean had wrote. So let's start with that. Sean a little bit, and talking about the big picture, how did you first discover the power of questions in your career and what inspired you to write the Art of the Question?

Sean Grace:

Yeah, good question.

Sean Grace:

Well, the art of the question came out. The book came out of a workshop I created five or six years ago called the Art of the Question, and that came out of a series of other workshops in communication that, where I used questions a lot as a catalyst and a sort of a bed in order to become better problem solvers, creative collaborators etc. So the feedback was like hey, you know, we want to learn more about this question stuff. So I figured, hey, why don't I dedicate a full workshop to that? But it goes way back to my early days in sales, right out of college, where I learned quickly the power of questions and how they can help lead, how they can help frame, how they can help assess problems. And so I started to really appreciate very early on the power of questions and since then I use them in leadership positions, management, consulting and also in my work in the creative fields until eventually I started these workshops and then they eventually formed into the workshop the Art of the Question, which then birthed the book the Art of the Question.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

This is amazing, and I like the fact that you've mentioned SS. Amazing, and I like the fact that you've mentioned assess, and I think it's important for when we do, when we do work on excellence projects or when we do work on excellence frameworks and models, it's important to assess where organizations are initially and then, based on that, improve things. And here you're talking about communication, and communication is key, right for everyone. So, whatever we are trying to achieve is important to be able to communicate clearly with people. And can you tell us a little bit more about the content of your book? What's unique about it? So, whatever we are trying to achieve, it's important to be able to communicate clearly with people. And can you tell us a little bit more about the content of your book? What's?

Sean Grace:

unique about it and why questioning is that important. Well, I think my book is rather unique in that it covers the art of questioning really across three primary areas. I start the book in sort of the foundations of inquiry, going back to sort of the concept of curiosity what makes us curious into the area of critical thinking, of how we determine what's real and what's not, by the use of questions, and a lot of that is informed through the great philosophers Socrates, plato and Aristotle. But I also touch on things like know thyself, which I pull a lot from Zen, buddhism, regarding the questions we ask ourselves to be more enlightened about, how we learn and how we navigate the world around us.

Sean Grace:

The second part of the book is focused on human relationships and how questions frame the way we communicate with each other, and that's everything from persuasion to problem solving to conflict resolution and things such as that, and listening is a big part of that as well. And then the third part of the book is more specifically about creativity, creative collaboration. More specifically about creativity, creative collaboration, design thinking and all areas where questions can be a primary trigger for innovative thinking, and how to use questions properly within a creative team in order to be more productive in your discovery and innovation-oriented endeavors. So that's what's I think unique about the book is I thread those three areas together as they relate to the concepts of inquiry, self-discovery, human relationships, problem solving and creative thinking.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

This is amazing. I like the self-discovery. I like I mean, when we talk about to leaders, we tell them the most important thing is for them to be to have that good self-awareness right, and self-discovery is important for leaders to be able to understand themselves first and be able to have those relations, those productive relations with others, and I think your book is really very helpful for leaders in that perspective. So, when you talk about the impact of questioning on leadership, what's the one question you think every leader should ask themselves before they start their day? What is the one thing that they need to focus on and what impactful question could lead them to have a better day?

Sean Grace:

Yeah, good question Boy. Lots of questions one can ask themselves as a leader to start their day. Of course, it depends on the contexts and where the set a direction and an example for their teams. So I think I guess, if I had to come up with a question or two that a leader might ask in the morning in what ways can I remove any obstacles today in the way of my team? Might be one of them. Another one might be today.

Sean Grace:

How might I act differently in order to of my team? Might be one of them. Another one might be today. How might I act differently in order to inspire my team? Uh, more more so than yesterday. Uh, from one thing, questions to anything regarding you know, ways in which, um, well, certainly one area could be just gratitude, right, what am I grateful for today and in what ways can I build on that gratitude in order to better inspire the people who report to me and who look to me? So those are just some examples you could ask yourself as a leader in order to set yourself up for maybe a more productive day in the role of servant leadership, in that it's really about inspiring your teams and asking the right questions of them in order for them to be better problem solvers themselves. But it does start with the questions we ask ourselves first and foremost as leaders.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I mean, this is excellent. I just came from the European conference for the Shingo in Manchester and it's all about leading with humility, and what you're saying here is, and it's, I think, a lot with me, and I've seen great examples. We've visited some sites where they follow the Shingo model and leaders. They do exactly that. They ask questions, they are present with their team and they try to really serve those teams, to be more engaged. They provide them what they need to be able to perform better. So that really resonates well with me. Sean, Thank you very much here. So, if we go back a little bit to our podcast and we call it Excellence Foresight, because it's all about anticipating future trends and sometimes we ask these questions to our guests about the future so how can asking the right questions help organizations stay ahead of the curve and especially when dealing with complex problems, human-related problems, right? So how can we really think about the future and try to anticipate those challenges or those opportunities to move forward?

Sean Grace:

Right. Well, in the book I talk a lot about the problem with why and the trouble with should, but the problem with why questions, especially when it comes to human relationships, why questions are very powerful questions because they point to purpose and mission. However, they can also, uh, sort of be problematic when it comes to inspiring others. Uh, so if you start with a, you know why aren't we doing better and why is our competition kicking our butts or why are we losing market share? Uh, you know, these are valid questions at at a certain level, but but the question one has to ask themself is that the right kind of question to get the answer you're hoping for? So I inspire, depending on the circumstance, to switch a why to how and when. It's more future oriented. How is prescriptive and it's solutions based, whereas why tends to be excuse based. And although, as I say, you can certainly try to find root cause based on why questions, it's hard to map a future out when you're using why questions. So, if you're looking towards the future as a leader and you're trying to come up with questions in which to maybe forge a better path forward, how questions might be the way to go, how questions might be the way to go. So if you're asking your team, you know why aren't we doing this, or why are we performing so poorly here, or even why are we doing well here?

Sean Grace:

A better question was how can we leverage what we're doing right in a more productive way? How might we change direction in order to be more competitive? How might we re-examine the way we do things around here in order to improve our ability to be more productive on a regular basis, to be more innovative, to be more creative? How might we? So I love how might we? It's a question type and a question frame which I think motivates and points towards the future. And if you're a leader figuring out how do we get from here to there, how questions may get you there a little more efficiently than why, and what questions. Now, what questions are okay too, depending on how they're framed, but I find the how might we? Questions to be some of the most powerful questions one could ask as a leader.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I totally agree with you. However, I'm going to challenge you a little bit, because when we if you hear Simon Sinek, for example we say start with why for change management, now that's a different type of why we're not trying to find out the root cause of problems here. But sometimes also when we explain to people why we want them to do something, why we want them to focus on something, that helps them really understand and connect to that thing. So do you agree with this, sean? Also in terms of why?

Sean Grace:

I do. I understand that. Why? Certainly in Cynic's approach regarding the three concentric circles of why, what and how. He looks at how as being the final.

Sean Grace:

I tend to flip that, depending again on what information you're working with and what the overall objectives are.

Sean Grace:

And what the overall objectives are, although I don't disagree with the premise that why can be a central focus for determining purpose, mission and vision, I still believe that you can take those why questions and turn them into how questions and possibly inspire more using how questions. But I also throw the caveat there that there are absolute times that the why question makes more sense in the moment. But in an everyday activity as a leader, especially when you're talking with other humans and we're not looking at deductive problem solving here, where there's a known answer and the why may very well get you there pretty well. But most of the time leaders aren't dealing with clear answers that are predetermined and strategies that require a broader, more divergent style of thinking and how I think leads you there a little more efficiently. But nothing is absolute in the world of questioning and communication. I think everything has its place and its time. So much respect to Simon Sinek, much respect to Simon Sinek, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I would ask those to consider why, as a secondary to a how?

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Great answer. Thank you very much for that answer. We know that sometimes people in many organizations are afraid to ask questions, so we spoke a little bit about the leaders. But how can these leaders create a culture where curiosity and inquiry are encouraged as tools for excellence, innovation and problem solving? So do you have one or two tips maybe to share with those leaders on how to encourage that, to create an atmosphere where people are encouraged to ask questions?

Sean Grace:

Yeah, it's a real challenge because a lot of times, organizations by default really value answers over questions, whereas the question often leads to much more productive ways of doing things, you know. So how do you inspire a culture of inquiry and questioning within an organization that might be used to looking strictly at? We just got to get the answer to this problem right. So I think there's a couple of things you can do. First of all, you set by example. If you're a leader, try to exercise your ability in asking questions wherever you go, every meeting you have, Try to avoid statements and try to frame everything that you'd like to say more as a question. Now, obviously, there's lots of things that you may not want to pose as questions, but there are many things you can probably reframe as questions. So if you can set the example that questions are something that are normal, they're accepted and it's safe, to ask questions within this environment.

Sean Grace:

that's the first thing. The second thing would be to maybe encourage those, say, during a leadership meeting, instead of making statements, reframe the statements as questions. So if someone has an idea about something and they want to present that idea, have them think about is there a way you can pose that idea in a question format as opposed to a statement format? When you pose questions during a meeting with a bunch of other people who are strong-minded with strong ideas themselves, when you pose your idea as a question, it creates a lot of interesting things. It creates a little bit of distance between the idea and yourself. It allows others to contribute without assuming that this is a foregone conclusion or you've decided that this is the absolute answer to the problem. You're opening up inquiry for others to ask questions, questions. So there's a less of a defensive posture on others when you're posing an idea that you could easily state as a statement but as a question.

Sean Grace:

So if, as a leader, you do more of this and encourage others to do it, you will start to cultivate a culture of questioning and inquiry. If you want to even go further than that, you can have what I call Q storms, which are sort of like brainstorms, but they're only questions. So you get together for half an hour with your leadership team or your R&D team or whatever team has to solve some problems and all you do is ask questions for half an hour. Now, there's obviously limits to that. You don't want people just asking questions. You want people to be involved in figuring out how to go forward. But the point is is to exercise the question-asking muscle within all of us and your team. So those are just a few little examples you might be able to utilize in trying to encourage more questioning within your organization.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I like these strategies and the Q-storms. I think this is a very good way to create a kind of a culture where people can have a space to ask questions. And if we go back to the leaders and I think a lot of leaders have a lot of challenges these days, maybe within organizations and you've mentioned the culture it's important to have a culture that supports, usually, people to be able to speak up and talk, but sometimes we have, as leaders, also some difficult questions to talk to our people. We have some difficult topics to address and we know that being transparent, being also open with the people, is as important in the organization, but maybe less people are practicing this, less leaders do that. So what is your um? What are the tips you would like to share, maybe here with the leaders who have some difficult questions to to ask or to to bring forward to the organization?

Sean Grace:

uh, are you uh questions for the organization or for specific members of a team, or your team itself? As the organization, are you questions for the organization or for specific members of a team, or your team itself?

Nancy Nouaimeh:

As an organization, sometimes we have challenges, we're in a rough path and we need to ask some difficult questions right and we need to be able, as leaders, to bring these to the team and the team to contribute to those ones. We don't sometimes have the necessary transparency for this, but leaders need to have that courage and be able to ask these difficult questions.

Sean Grace:

Right? Well, again, it comes down to your comfort level and being able to ask good questions. The other aspect would be to be sure that your questions are not accusatory and they're not passive, aggressive, which goes back to the why versus how, sometimes even like an interpersonal example. You know, your partner comes home from work and walks in the house and the first thing she says is why is this house always a mess? And now, granted, she may very well be looking for a root cause, but likely not she's. She's basically using why as a way to potentially accuse the partner of not doing their part. Now, the partner may very well receive that and and get the message, but they may very well not, which may turn into an argument of who does what in the house, right, whereas if she came home and she stood looking in the living room and she might say how might we keep this house clean? Now, that separates the problem from the person, it doesn't wrap the problem around the individual and it gives agency to the other person as well as yourself, to figuring out a collaborative way to move forward. So this applies also in the business environment. Again, that why versus how thing, and, as a leader, to ask the tough questions of your team.

Sean Grace:

I always suggest you take a coaching approach when it comes to questions with your teams. It's all about empowering them and, secondarily, it's about empowering them to solve their own problems. So if you have a fairly existential issue in front of you or a big issue with the company and tough questions need to be asked, the questions need to be motivated and directional in a way that's going to spark ideas, that's going to get you closer to where you want to go. Questioning incorrectly and negatively could pull the team down and essentially not inspire them but deflate them and have it harder to get to that end point. So how you question your team, how you question your organization, has to come from a place of empathy. It has to come from a place that you're here to empower them to think more about utilizing their own ideas and coming up with concepts, and not just following through, which, of course, is important.

Sean Grace:

But we all these days need a lot of creative ideas to come forth. If you're a leader, your questioning should always be focused on how can I best ask this question in order to spark the most innovative and inspiring and passionate reactions, as opposed to how can I avoid asking a question that will potentially create a negative response which may not get me further down the road. So it's that metacognitive skill of being able to first ask yourself, as a leader, what kind of question is best in this circumstance in order to move this project forward and to get my team to think more, uh, innovatively, uh and uh, and less accusatorily or excusatorily, uh. So did that address the question?

Nancy Nouaimeh:

absolutely. I think it's. It's the answer I was looking for, and I'm happy that you've mentioned the word empathy and you've mentioned also, like coaching people, because these days, I think we have to really put the employees and and the and the human element at the center of all what we're doing and, as a leader, having the focus to focus on, and that, I think, will help us really get the right questions to the team and engage them to find the solutions themselves, which I think should be the way that every leader should, should, should, should do. And one thing I think when you were talking, I was thinking that you're kind of if you are a leader, you want to really be able to get the best out of your team.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

You need to have kind of a plan for your questioning, if I understood it right. So you need to have kind of a strategy. You need to be able to ask the right questions, but before that, you need to be able to know what you want to get out of your team and do that through the right questions. So I like that approach and I think there's a lot to learn from you and from the book. But let's do a quick fire round now. And what's the most? If I ask you what's the most overused question in business meetings today? Something which I think it's a question everybody's using but it's not really having that much value anymore.

Sean Grace:

Wow, okay, the most overvalued question in business environments, I would say. Well, certainly, this applies to a lot of meetings, right, does anyone have any questions? Now, that's a really innocuous question, right? It seems perfectly normal and it's something that we all do all the time. Anybody have any questions.

Sean Grace:

The problem with that, as a leader, is that you're often not going to spark any answers. You might here and there, but the problem with asking such a broad question like that, it's too big, it's too broad. What I prefer to do is I prefer to ask specifically about the subject that we were just discussing, not have a broad. Does anybody have any questions? It would be more like so what does anybody see as a challenge in this particular plan that we talked about? Charlie, where do you think the roadblocks might be if we move forward with this idea? Um, so the more specific you are as a leader, especially at the end of a meeting, um, with your questioning, you're going to get um much more relevant and meaningful answers as opposed to does anybody have any questions?

Sean Grace:

Now, that may very well spark a couple of good questions, but in my experience, more times than not you're going to get silence or one or two questions, whereas if you address the specific issue or a part of the issue in a very proactive way, you'll get people to think more specifically. So if you can get anyone to think about, you know know, an aspect of something versus the entire elephant. What do you think about the trunk? Uh? What's your thoughts about the tusk? Is it uh? Is it too white? Uh, the point would be okay get specific, as opposed to saying, hey, any questions about the elephant. So that would be, I think, what I would come up, come up with.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I totally agree with you and I often ask these questions and, yes, I hear silence afterwards. So I definitely need to start reading your book this weekend. There's a lot, I think, to learn there of how really to engage with the audience and make sure that we get good answers. So if there's one question that you think we should ask more often I think you gave us a few examples here, but is there anything else you think that people maybe could start a meeting with? A question to start a meeting with and generate good conversations?

Sean Grace:

Right, wow. Well, again, all of this is so context dependent. I mean, you'd like to think that your questions are very relevant to the topic that you're about to embark upon. So I tend to not have generic questions that I would just start with, unless it's a very generic scenario. Maybe it's a networking event or a dinner party or something where you might need something to kind of get things going. But for a meeting, you'd like to think that the questions should be motivated in the sense that they're forward pointing, they're solutions focused, they address the specific issue at hand and they're open-ended just the traditional open-ended question kind of thing, but it's open-ended to, in other words, invite a discussion that will inspire and spark ideas. So, as a leader, to start a meeting, any question that you think of and again this goes back to what we were talking about before preparing and asking yourself internally, silently, what question is going to kick this meeting off in the most productive way. Once you ask that question, then your question, hopefully, will be pointed towards energizing and sparking ideas, versus looking for excuses. Now again, why is perfectly fine, depending on how it's used. However, in my experience in leadership, why questions can create a very creative sort of how should we say roundabout of excuse making?

Sean Grace:

I have many examples where, as a young manager, I would sit with my team and I would ask them why, questions? Why aren't we hitting our sales goals? You know, why are we losing to our competition? Why do you think we're not going to be able to hit our goals for the year? All these, why questions?

Sean Grace:

And in every case, each salesperson would come up with very convincing answers as to why it's not going to work, or why it's not happening, or why we're not reaching the goals. It's not going to work, or why it's not happening, or why we're not reaching the goals, you know. So I, after a while, I say, wow, okay, uh, their brains are working, but they're working in this direction. Let me, let me reframe the question how might we achieve our sales goal? Uh, well, at that point, uh, they start to think differently. They use the same amount of creative energy, but instead of figuring out the excuses as to why something is happening, now, granted, there may be something valuable in that, but a lot of times it's not as valuable as you think. When you pose it as a how, before you know it, the whole team's like well, let's pretend, and before you know it, you've got 20 good ideas on how to solve this problem. So, as a leader, think a bit before you start the meeting. So your questions are motivated and they don't spark excuse making.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Excellent, I like this and I think you have triple. I's here. You said inviting and inspiring ideas, so it's important. I think that's really kind of a nice thing for leaders to keep in mind is that when you ask questions, make sure that they are inviting and they inspire ideas. Thank you for that. This is really great, john, and I'm just I'm curious now, as we come to the end of this, of our episode here today, to give an example about, maybe, or some anecdotes about, the funniest and most surprising answer you've ever received from a question you ask in your work sphere, something where you remember say, oh, that was really fun boy, that's a tough one nancy.

Sean Grace:

I don't know if I could think of anything in particular that would stand out as being exceptionally funny or exceptionally surprising. I mean because so many times I'll ask questions and these days, as a consultant, I'm always asking questions of my clients and prospective clients regarding what they're hoping to achieve and where their obstacles seem to be, and often from that a lot of very interesting answers come about. But I, you know, I hate, hate to say it, but I can't think of anything that stands out as being overly funny or overly uh. Wow, that, uh, that was surprising. But I'm sure I have lots of examples somewhere deep in my memory, uh, but right now it's not being.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

That's fine. That was for me, because I I try to remember such things and usually I don't, so that's fine. So, sean, I think you gave us great examples here. I just want to give you the last minute, if there's anything or one piece of advice that you would like to give our audience listening to us here on how to start asking better questions today. One tip, one last tip that they could use.

Sean Grace:

Well, I mean, I'm going to go back to my favorite subject, and that is the why versus how. Again, this is, even on the personal side, right. When you start to ask yourself questions. You know, why do I always do this? Why am I always thinking this way? Why am I so self-destructive? Why do I always say the wrong things? All right, so these questions are things that are common questions that many of us ask ourselves, but unfortunately, they're not very productive questions.

Sean Grace:

When you ask questions within yourself, about yourself, what happens is that you'll come up with answers, and those answers aren't necessarily going to be the most healthy answers, because a lot of times, what you'll do is when you ask yourself a why question about why you're doing something a certain way. Now, granted, there are definitely times you want to do that. You know, why am I approaching the problem this way instead of this way? That's certainly a legitimate questioning in the why realm, but when you get to sort of more of that existence thing, of who I am as a person, you'll start to wrap behavior around who you are yourself. You know, why am I? Well, this is just who I am. You know, I'm not very elo am I'm not very eloquent. I'm not a productive person, I'm not a friendly person, whatever the answers that your brain wants to come up with because it's not always on your side, unfortunately you'll start to identify through that.

Sean Grace:

Why questioning of yourself. You'll wrap it around and before you know it, you start to become more and more of the thing that you don't like about yourself. If you switch those questions once again to how or what let's say how questions, how might I approach these situations differently in the future? How might I be better at responding to my boss when they really get on me instead of? Why do I always just shut down?

Sean Grace:

Why do I get so crushed when my boss comes to me and asks me hard questions those why questions may not be necessarily productive, but if you reframe those questions as to how can I be more responsive, how can I be a better communicator, your brain starts to work once again just as hard at coming up with ideas and how to go forward, a prescriptive line on how to solve your problems, and not come up with reasons why they are the way they are. So I would say one of the more powerful things that you can do to become a better question asker is to ask yourself more of the how questions and think twice about the why questions. They do have a role, but often there's a better way to frame it, and this would also be on a leadership role as well, as you're posing your questions to your teams. So that would be once again I know it's a recurring theme today the how versus why, but I think it's so potent in so many regards that I think that that would be my answer to that question.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

And this is a great answer. I think it's a very powerful way really to focus on the how, and I think, when we remove the blame and the guilt, part of what we feel around the questions, I think it's about the way we answer. I think that's going to make a big difference for the way we answer and the answers we give to the questions. So thank you very much, sean. It was really great to have you here today. I've enjoyed the discussion, I've enjoyed all the answers and I'm going to start reading the book soon, hopefully. And with this, I would like to say to our listeners thank you for joining us on this journey into the new ways for excellence. We hope you found today's discussion and conversation as inspiring and thought-provoking.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

As Sean and I did Remember, the pursuit of excellence is a continuous journey and by embracing innovation and leadership, we can all make a significant impact. Please don't forget to subscribe to our Excellence Foresight channel and stay tuned for more exciting episodes with remarkable guests who are setting new standards in their fields. Until next time, keep striving for excellence and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I'm Nancy Noemi. This has been Excellence Foresight with Sean, grace and the art. Keep striving for excellence and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I'm Nancy Noemi. This has been Excellence, foresight with Sean Grace and the art of the question. See you in the next episode.

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