You don’t have to be special to be a leader and you don’t have to be an expert to help other leaders succeed. You can start right now, right where you are.

Trusted Leadership Advisor is a compilation of some of my previous posts on this topic. In the ebook, I show you how to think about your role as a trusted leadership advisor, what to say and how to get started. Take a look – and if you find it helpful, please share it.

I’d also appreciate your feedback. This is my first ebook and I want to know if the format, structure and ideas prove to be helpful for you. You can leave me a comment below or contact me directly.

There’s so much work to do – let’s work together!

The interesting thing about coaching is how dynamic of a leadership role it is. Supervisors can coach. Mentors can coach. Peers can coach. Executive coaches can coach (obviously). Just about anyone can coach at one time or another.

Whether you have the opportunity to be coached or to be a coach, let’s take a look at six things coaching leaders do that set them apart.

Coaches Don’t Set the Agenda

Leaders must be proactive, which means taking responsibility to set the agenda in leadership situations. But coaching leaders are most concerned with the developmental process of the leader he or she is supporting. That means allowing the the other person to take responsibility for determining the desired outcomes – and then working together to create a strategy to reach them.

Coaches Focus on the Future

Counselors often focus on understanding or interpreting the past. Coaches, on the other hand, focus on helping to create the future. The past is over and done with – it can’t change. Coaching leaders don’t get sidetracked wading through past experiences of others. They help them focus on the future they want to create.

Coaches Listen

Listening is hard work. If you don’t think so, practice active listening the next time someone walks into your office. In most conversations, we either don’t pay attention, listen with preconceived biases or simultaneously try to come up with solutions while the other person is talking. Coaching leaders have mastered the art of listening for the sake of understanding so in order to maximize the quality of their dialogue.

Coaches Ask Questions

Questions are the anecdote to unsolicited (or in some case, solicited) advice. It’s not that advice is bad, it’s just that advice often short-circuits the development process in others. Following someone else’s advice is a lot easier than exercising critical thinking. It’s also easier to avoid taking responsibility if the advice doesn’t work. Even when they have great advice, coaching leaders start by asking powerful, open-ended questions to give the other person the chance to come up with their own best solution.

Coaches are Action-Oriented

Nice conversations are nice, but ultimately fruitless. Action-oriented conversations drives change. Coaching leaders demonstrate value to others by helping them take their ideas and translate them into action items. They do this by helping them make a decision or choose a direction among multiple options. Another way is by helping to craft SMART goals and clarify next steps.

Coaches Give Responsibility

Taking responsibility is Leadership 101. Giving responsibility is Leadership 102. Think about the difference. When we take responsibility, we develop ourselves. When we help someone else take responsibility, we develop them. It’s often easier to take responsibility for outcomes by providing quick direction and then moving on to the next thing. Giving responsibility – and supporting the other person along the way – takes more time and more effort, but that’s where true leadership growth happens.

If you want to help others succeed, you’ve chosen a noble pursuit. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to work at it – and it’s hard work! But the reward is always worth it – especially when you find that the leaders you’ve coached start coaching others.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Why Ask Questions?

Many leaders hesitate to ask questions because they fear it will make them appear weak. Leaders are suppose to have the all the answers, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the world we live in has become so complex that it is simply not possible for anyone to have all the answers, no matter how tenured he or she is. But there are all kinds of benefits to asking questions, regardless of how much you know. Here are a few:

Great questions lead to great discoveries. Author and consultant Bobb Biehl likes to say, “If you ask profound questions, you get profound answers. If you ask shallow questions, you get shallow answers. If you ask no questions, you get no answers at all.”

Great questions are the antidote to advice. Our own advice can be intelligent and fitting sometimes, but lousy or misinformed other times. Giving advice is easy and costs little, at least on the surface. In organizational settings however, a leader’s advice can quickly gets translated into a “direct order” with no room for further discussion.

Great questions develop the critical thinking skills of others. If you’re a leader, the critical thinking skills of your team will likely determine how far you go. When you give answers, you get followers. When you give questions (and coach through the process of determining the best answer), you develop leaders.

Great questions delegates responsibility. At the end of the day, if you’re the person everyone comes to with every problem, your leadership bar will remain low. Leaders need followers who can solve problems on their own. And keep in mind that a person is always more motivated to act on and own a solution he’s come up with himself than to follow the guidance of someone else.

What do Great Questions Look Like?

It’s true that most leaders don’t become great at asking questions until they become great at listening (something that should cause each of us to pause and consider). There’s a learning process for everything. But in the meantime, let’s consider some examples of what great, powerful questions look like.

Leading vs. Non-Leading Questions: A leading question proposes a solution in the form of a question. A non-leading question opens up the possibility for multiple solutions. Consider the differences between these two examples.

• Leading: “What would happen if you tried having training meetings on Tuesdays?”
• Non-Leading: “What are some different options for conducting training?”

Closed vs. Open-ended Questions: Closed questions require a “yes” or “no” answer while open-ended questions can have many outcomes.

• Closed: “Have you thought about creating a new task force?”
• Open-ended: “What are some ways you could approach this challenge?”

Advice vs. Possibility Questions: An advice question is basically just implied advice in the form of a question.

• Advice: “Couldn’t you address that situation with the sales rep directly?”
• Possibility: “How could you address that situation?”

Why vs. “Tell Me More” Questions: Why questions can feel abrasive and accusatory, regardless of intent. No one likes being interrogated. Using a “tell me more” approach opens up the dialogue.

• Why: “Why did you decide to ship only seven orders?”
• Tell me more: “Can you tell me more about the thought process for this shipment?”

Learning to ask great questions instead of giving advice is probably one of the hardest disciplines leaders encounter. (It’s right up there with active listening!) I know by personal experience and from conducting training with seasoned leaders. The first step is to stop yourself from giving unsolicited advice. The next step is to respond with a question. The final step is to make that question a powerful one. My encouragement is to give it a try and stick with it. Ask someone to give you feedback on your question-asking ability. It’ll be slow at first, but eventually start becoming natural. And the leaders you serve will develop right along with you.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Just like in medicine, the last thing a change practitioner should do is prescribe before diagnosing. You don’t want to “fix” the wrong problem. That usually just makes things worse and hurts your credibility.

So how do you diagnose an organization?

Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as you might think. While survey and data analysis have their place, the method I like to start with is the interview. I’ll identify the key leaders who make the management decisions (VPs, directors, managers, etc). Never just one, but several. Then I’ll schedule time with them to get their input.

The First Three Questions

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a set of three questions I always ask to leaders I meet with, whether I’m doing a diagnostic or not. It allows me to cut straight to the chase of how their organization is doing without being overly intrusive. Here they are:

• What excites you about your organization?
• What would you like to get to next if you could?
• What concerns do you have about your organization right now?

With these short questions, I’m able to quickly capture an overview of the passion, strategy and fear of the leader in a relatively pressure-free way. But if I will be responsible for proposing and/or delivering a solution, I don’t stop there.

In graduate school, I read the book How to OD…And Live to Tell About It by William Becker. In it is an organizational diagnostic I’ve come to really appreciate. Below is a sample of the most important questions from Becker that I use and you can use as well.

Culture

• What are people like and what seems to be important to them?
• What type of person succeeds here? Why?
• How are people professionally developed?

Strategy

• What is the organization’s mission?
• What are your key organizational goals?
• What do people perceive they are most rewarded and recognized for doing?
• What are the top three challenges facing your organization/industry now? Over the next 3-5 years?

Change History

• What are some of the recent (or current) change initiatives your organization has undergone on over the last few years?
• What was their purpose? What resulted and how has this impacted your organization today?
• What were some of the obstacles faced and how were they addressed?

Needs

• In your view, what is the most important thing your company needs to address?
• What do you want to take on right now? Why haven’t you?

Influence

• How is the executive team composed in your firm? What are they good at (as a team)?
• What seems to drive decisions here?

Preferences

• Are you looking for a pair of hands to tell them what to do, or an expert to tell you what is the problem and provide a solution, or are you looking for a collaborative effort where someone facilitates you and your stakeholder’s discovery of the problem and create solutions together?
• Is there anything else I should be aware of if I am to be helpful to your organization?

Once you’ve interviewed enough of the leaders to get an accurate assessment of the situation, you have will generally have the information you need to get started. Compile the results, highlight the major themes, and report them back to the leaders you interviewed. Include your recommendations for what needs to be done and how you propose to make it happen – along with their necessary involvement.

Congratulations, you’ve just completed step one – and what some consider the most important step – in the consulting process!

What other questions would you include? Keep in mind that most leaders don’t have time to answer all of your questions!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Asking Why Defines Success

People want to win. But no one can win without first defining what success looks like. Success is derived from purpose, no matter how large or small the project or idea.

Asking Why Creates Decision-Making Criteria

Have you ever been on a team struck by the “good idea fairy?” Did it send you down a massive rabbit trail? Don’t pull the trigger on an idea until you’ve established criteria to let you know if it fits or not.

Asking Why Aligns Resources

It’s great to have access to resources. But if you’re unclear on purpose, no amount of resources will ever be enough. Of course, simply spreading all resources evenly across all functions isn’t much better.  That’s where the value of “why” comes in; it shows where to concentrate your greatest resources.

Asking Why Motivates

Here’s a direct quote from David Allen: “If there’s no good reason to be doing something, it’s not worth doing.” If meaning truly is one of mankind’s most significance pursuits, it follows that meaningless activities have the power to completely demoralize. On the other hand, recalling why an activity is important renews the motivation to see it through.

Asking Why Clarifies Focus

When we don’t ask why, our purpose temporarily gets out of focus, much like the lens of a camera. Remember how much of a difference high definition television made when it first came to market? Asking why provides laser sharp, HD focus.

Asking Why Expands Options

Once focus is clear, we have freedom to think creatively about how to achieve the desired result. It’s like deciding which options you’d like in your new car. Once you decide on a model, you are freed up to decide how to customize it.

One final note: a post on “why” would be incomplete without including a mention of Simon Sinek‘s book Start With Why. Where Allen focuses on the practical side of asking why, Sinek harps on the inspirational merits.

What is it that you need to ask “why?” about this week?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.