Questions and Team Building for CEOs

An army of one isn’t really much of an army is it? And I can assure you that any CEO who views him or herself as an army of one will fail.

Whether you like it or not, your success as a CEO will be largely tied to your team building ability. Not only do great CEOs understand how to recruit a top executive team, but they also understand how to build cohesion among team members through collaboration while addressing specific situational and contextual needs.

Great CEOs realize the importance of being consistently, purposefully, and intensely engaged with their CXOs. They understand how to effectively deploy these highly productive and valuable team members to create tremendous leverage and velocity across the enterprise. In today’s post, I’ll share the questions that great CEOs use to align the interests and focus the efforts of their executive team…

It is not uncommon when working with new clients that I find very fractured executive teams where team members more frequently work against one another, rather than with one another (see “Managing Tough Relationships“). I often observe ego-centered conflicts among senior executives, which turn into a competition for turf, budget, power, influence, control, and ultimately survival. As a CEO you can either put your executives against one another or have them collaboratively engage in supporting one another for the overall good of the enterprise. An executive team that actually embraces the concept of collaboration will substantially outperform a silo-centric executive team focused on empire-building.

Great CEOs not only view their interactions with team members as coaching and mentoring opportunities but also as learning opportunities for themselves. If as a leader you don’t take the time to get to know your team members on a very personal basis you simply won’t build the trust necessary to successfully weather the seasons of leadership. Because all leaders face good times and bad, it is essential that strong, caring, and loyal relationships are established so that candor and collaboration can occur irrespective of the situation at hand.

I read a great post  by Dan Rockwell (@LeadershipFreak) in which he asked: “what’s the most powerful question of all?” My belief is that there is no perfect question, just the right question for the moment. The comment I left on Dan’s post was as follows:

“Thought-provoking post to be sure…However my belief is that the most powerful question of all is the one that works within the context of the situation at hand. The question must be appropriate to the person(s) being addressed, the timing must be spot-on, but most importantly it must unlock the door to reveal the needed input/feedback/information.

Relying on any single question to serve as the omnibus catch-all question is dangerous. I’m not sure what the most powerful question in the world is, but I know that the most powerful question of the moment changes frequently…”

Therefore in the text that follows I’ll provide you with a resource that is immediately actionable, and highly productive – a list of questions that can be used across situations, constituencies, and reporting lines. I have found that one of the most effective ways for CEOs to lead their senior executives is by helping them refine and justify their reasoning through the use of intelligent questions. This serves to not only align interests and areas of focus, but also to facilitate the exchange of insights, and to acquire useful knowledge and information – it also builds stronger relationships. Contrary to the beliefs of some, the dialog is a healthy thing.

I strongly recommend to all CEOs that they routinely ask team members the following questions:

• Why? (my personal favorite and the most powerful one-word question on the planet)
• How can I help you with that? What do you need from me in order to make that happen?
• That’s an interesting thought, what process did you go through to reach that conclusion?
• What’s our biggest risk in this, and what’s your fallback position?
• What if we did nothing at all, what would happen?
• Why is this important to you?
• What does this accomplish for us?
• If we fail in this can we live with that?
• How does this add value to our <<fill in the blank>>?
• Can you give me a bit more detail on the logic used to arrive at your <<costs, timing, return estimates, etc.>>?
• How will this impact <<individual, team, business unit, competitive advantage, brand perception, customer satisfaction, etc.>>?
• What are the greatest challenges you face in pulling this off, and how do you plan to deal with them?
• Where do you see the “X” account in <<insert time period>> and what can we do to (improve customer satisfaction, increase influence with key stakeholders, increase the life-cycle value,  etc.)?
• Which markets, partners, clients, or other opportunities can add significant value to our business?
• What specific steps can you take to increase your area’s contribution margin?
• Does this add value to our core business? How? Why?
• Does this effectively and efficiently support our values, vision, and strategy? How? Why?
• What can you offer as validation of proof of concept?
• What motivates <<insert person’s name>>? What’s really important to them?
• What will be the key performance indicators for this? How will we measure them, and what hurdles do we need to hit to be successful?
• Do you have the necessary resources (financial, technology, talent, infrastructure, etc.) to hit your objectives?
• How can we improve the risk management, governance, control, and reporting functions for this?
• Why should we make this investment? How does it drive revenue, profit, brand equity, competitive advantage, etc. What are the potential risks vs. possible rewards and what is the downside of not making the investment?
• What are your biggest obstacles and barriers to success? What are your plans to deal with them and what do you need from me?
• Are all your resources properly aligned and connected?
• What are the weakest points in your area and how do you plan to deal with them?
• Who are your strongest leaders and how are you developing them to handle more responsibility?
• What are you doing to attract new talent?

While the aforementioned list of questions is clearly not exhaustive, it offers some insight into where a CEO should focus their efforts and attention…Perhaps best of all it places you in a constant position of being an active listener, learner, and mentor. If you have a favorite question(s) you use to focus and/or refine your team’s thinking that you’d like to share, please leave a comment below…