One perfect question trumps 1,000 great answers

One of my hero-buddies is Michael Bungay Stanier, who wrote the best-seller
Do More Great Work.

One of his wonderful ongoing projects is reaching out to leaders, consultants
and coaches, asking them: What’s your best question? This is such an
important topic! Because truly successful leaders may not always have the
best answers — that’s why they hire great teammates — but one of their most
crucial roles is to ask the absolutely right question at the right time.
That skill is one of the things that separates the best from from the rest.

In 16 video-taped episodes so far, Michael has compiled an amazing array of amazing people providing their best questions.

Here are my best questions in an episode I share with Dianne Coppola
and Cindy Clay.



Additionally: A couple years ago, I put together my 25 Perfect Questions.
How many of these could be your perfect questions?

ABOUT YOU
• What makes you… you?
• Who are you becoming?
• What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
• How are you, really?
• What is your ideal day like?
• What keeps you up at night?
• What is the proudest moment in your life so far?
• What’s the last totally crazy thing you did?
• What does being successful mean to you?
• What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve learned along the way?
• If you could call yourself five years ago and had 30 seconds,
what would you say?
• What is the biggest challenge in your life?
• What makes you laugh?
• What is the last thing you did for the first time?
• Why are you here, really?

BIGGER THAN YOU
• Who was the last person that changed your way of thinking?
(…Believing? …Feeling?)
• Who have you been completely vulnerable with? (…How? …Why?)
• What is the most valuable valueless thing you own?
• What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
• When you die, what do you want to be remembered for?
• What is your biggest regret?

BIGGER THAN ALL OF US
• What is justice?
• What is love?
• What cause (or belief, or value) would you be willing to die for?
• What really matters?

000