COMMON SENSE LEADERSHIP
When a Question Is Really a Lecture Wearing a Question Mark
Jenny Johnston | Leadership for Scaling Organizations
Experienced leaders usually know the right answers.
Should leaders listen? Yes. Be curious? Of course. Avoid assumptions? Obviously. Give people ownership? Absolutely.
And yet knowing all of this does not stop us from doing the opposite when we are under pressure.
That is one of the challenges I increasingly see in leadership development.
We spend a great deal of time teaching experienced leaders what good leadership looks like.
Far less time helping them see what they actually do.
And those are not the same thing.
Knowing Is Not the Same as Seeing
Recently, I was working with a group of experienced leaders.
One participant was reflecting on a situation that had left her frustrated. Someone had not delivered what she expected, and she was disappointed with the result.
It would have been relatively easy to diagnose the problem for her.
Instead, I asked: “Where were you in the situation? What were you doing—or not doing—that could have contributed to the result?”
As we continued through exercises, discussion, and role-play, something started to shift.
She began to recognize that she had been making assumptions about what the other person knew and what skills they had, rather than actually asking.
She had been focused on pushing for what she needed, rather than becoming genuinely curious about what was happening for the other person.
And she noticed another important distinction.
She thought she was creating alignment around decisions, but she was not necessarily involving the other person in making those decisions.
The most important insight was not simply that she could have handled this particular situation differently.
It was the recognition that this might be a pattern.
I might be doing this all the time.
That is a very different kind of learning.
I could have told her what I was seeing much earlier.
She probably would have understood.
She might even have agreed.
But I do not believe it would have landed in remotely the same way.
Because there is a difference between understanding someone else’s analysis of your behavior and recognizing yourself in it.
Information can help us understand good leadership. Discovery helps us see ourselves.
The Problem With Being Useful Too Quickly
This is not only a coaching problem.
It happens every day inside organizations.
A team member brings a leader a problem.
The leader can see the answer.
They have more experience. They have encountered something similar before. Perhaps they genuinely do know the best way forward.
So they help.
They explain.
Sometimes they even try to turn that explanation into a coaching question:
“Do you think perhaps you should involve Finance earlier?”
“Could it be that you aren’t communicating clearly enough?”
“Have you considered that they might not understand what you expect?”
Technically, these are questions.
But often they are not expressions of curiosity at all.
They are lectures wearing question marks.
The leader already knows the answer they want.
The question is simply a more polite route to getting the other person there.
That may feel like coaching.
But the thinking still belongs to the leader.
The Hidden Cost of Always Having the Answer
There are situations where telling is absolutely appropriate.
If someone lacks information, give it to them.
If expectations are unclear, clarify them.
If a decision belongs to you, make it.
If there is a genuine crisis, leadership may require direct intervention.
Coaching is not a religion, and asking endless questions when someone simply needs an answer is not good leadership.
The harder judgment is recognizing the moments when a person is capable of thinking something through themselves.
Because if the leader always moves first, something subtle begins to happen.
The leader becomes the source of the thinking.
People learn to bring problems upward.
They wait for the answer.
They become skilled at working out what the leader wants rather than developing their own judgment.
And the leader becomes increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to take enough ownership.
The more capable you are of providing the answer, the more discipline it can take not to provide it too quickly.
Don’t Steal the Discovery
I have started thinking about this as a simple leadership discipline:
Don’t steal the discovery.
That does not mean withholding expertise.
It means noticing when your desire to be useful may be getting in the way of someone else’s thinking.
Sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can do is see the answer—and not say it yet.
Instead, ask a question that changes where the other person is looking.
In the example above, the participant began by looking almost entirely at somebody else:
Why didn’t they understand?
Why didn’t they deliver?
Why am I not getting what I need?
The question changed the direction of attention:
Where were you in this?
Suddenly there was another place to look.
What had she assumed?
What had she failed to ask?
How had she approached the conversation?
What responsibility did she have for the result?
This did not remove the other person’s accountability.
It expanded the picture to include her own.
That is an important distinction.
Good coaching questions are not designed to remove responsibility from other people or turn every organizational problem into a failure of leadership.
They help us see more of the system we are part of—including our own contribution to it.
Good Questions Change the Direction of Attention
We sometimes judge questions by how clever they sound.
I am increasingly less interested in clever questions.
Some of the most powerful questions are remarkably simple.
Where were you in this?
What might you be assuming?
What haven’t you asked?
What are you contributing to the result?
What might the other person be seeing that you are not?
What becomes possible if your current explanation is incomplete?
A good question creates a pause between our first interpretation of a situation and the conclusion we draw from it.
That pause matters.
Because leaders are constantly operating with incomplete information.
We make assumptions about capability.
We interpret resistance.
We decide why someone has behaved in a particular way.
We decide that people understand because we have explained something.
We assume alignment because nobody disagreed.
And then we act on those conclusions.
Curiosity is not therefore simply a desirable leadership characteristic.
It is a practical discipline for reducing the risk that we act confidently on an incomplete picture.
The Hardest Step May Be the One Nobody Sees
There is a sequence I am now practicing deliberately in my own coaching and facilitation:
Notice → Hold → Question → Silence → Discovery → Sharpen
Notice. You see something in what the person is describing.
Hold. You resist explaining it immediately.
Question. You ask something that encourages them to examine the situation differently.
Silence. You give them time to think rather than rescuing them from the discomfort.
Discovery. They begin to recognize and articulate what they see.
Sharpen. Only then do you add something—perhaps challenge the thinking, provide another perspective, connect it to a framework, or translate it into action.
For me, the hardest part is probably the second step.
Hold.
When you have spent years accumulating experience, seeing patterns quickly feels useful.
Often it is.
But there are moments when demonstrating how clearly I can see is less valuable than creating the conditions in which somebody else can see more clearly for themselves.
From Understanding to Ownership
This matters far beyond coaching conversations.
It matters when leaders are developing their teams.
It matters when founders are trying to stop being in the middle of every decision.
It matters when leadership teams want people to take greater ownership.
And it matters in organizations that are scaling, where the quality of thinking and decision-making can no longer sit with a handful of senior people.
You cannot build greater ownership while continuing to own everybody else’s thinking.
If we want people to exercise judgment, challenge assumptions, and take responsibility, they need opportunities to do exactly that.
Sometimes that means teaching.
Sometimes it means directing.
Sometimes it means challenging.
And sometimes it means asking one good question—and then resisting the urge to answer it yourself.
Because a leader can understand a lesson when we explain it.
But the learning often becomes much more powerful when they recognize themselves in it.
See it. Don’t say it yet.
Give them the chance to discover it.
Then help them do something with what they have seen.
ABOUT JENNY JOHNSTON
Jenny Johnston works with founders, executives, and leadership teams in scaling organizations to build the leadership capability required for greater clarity, ownership, and performance.
Common Sense Leadership is her practical approach to helping leaders translate good leadership intentions into observable leadership behavior.
