Page 56 - Appreciative Leadership

The Wisdom of Inquiry 29

the most efficiently customer-centered way to organize a distribution
center? What makes a successful large-scale meeting?
Appreciative leaders develop a habit of asking positive questions
to learn how people and things work when they are at their best. Th eir

positive questions lead to a domino effect of positive outcomes: curi-
osity, learning, elevated respect for diff erences, deepened relation-
ships, and change for the better.

The wisdom of inquiry lies with the willingness and ability to ask
questions that break the mold and challenge the status quo while at the
same time, strengthen relatedness and guide people to values-based
performance and higher levels of consciousness. Inquiry requires
daily practice: to ask more and tell less; to study the root causes of suc-
cess rather than the root causes of failure; and to wonder why people
do what they do, rather than judge or berate them. Appreciative lead-
ers choose to ask about, care for, and celebrate what works well now,
and they trust that by doing so, good things—what they want at work
and in their life—will emerge.

Ask More and Tell Less

If we were meant to talk more and listen less,
we would have two mouths and one ear.
—MARK TWAIN

Over and over again people have told us that the best leaders they
know—and the people they happily follow—are people who ask
questions and truly listen to what others have to say. Consider two
crews of subcontractors working on home renovations. Th e fi rst crew
arrives and waits for the project leader to show up. When he does,
they gather, and he tells everyone what to do. He departs, and they
get to work mumbling to each other things the client does not want to
hear. When something unexpected happens, they stop working, call
the project leader, and wait for him to return and decide what to do.

The job gets done without a sense of ownership and pride. Th e client
wonders about quality and hopes she never needs to call them back.