Stop Being a Superhero and Start Building Your Team: 6 Capacity-Building Questions Every Leader Should Use

Let’s say that when you started work today, you opened your email to find a message from business unit leaders telling you to train your team members to be team leaders.  The goal is to increase team member engagement and responsibility, but the only direction given is in the description below:

Your primary role as a manager is to build a replacement bench from your team members. You are to equip each team member with the capability of stepping into a team leader role by transferring your leadership skills and expertise to them. To prepare team members for leadership you are to shift management of day-to-day team responsibilities, including organizing, decision making and problem solving, to the team.

Sounds great, but how do you do that?

First, let’s stop any superhero behaviors. When your team members work with a dominating team leader, they learn to defer to you for too much direction. Relying on their superhero boss, they may rarely have the opportunity to fully apply their expertise to the work.  So, we may be building skills team members already have, but under-utilize, because you are always there to save the day whether or not they need your help.

To change this, you’re going to pack away your supersuit and help your team members find their own answers. Your new superpower will be using well-placed questions—a leader attribute we call “Ask, Don’t Tell”—to facilitate team activities like planning, analyzing, and decision making while you “white knuckle” the inclination to take charge. As you do, you’ll be looking for real-time teaching opportunities to share what you’ve learned through classroom and on-the-job experiences.

“What’s a good capacity-building question,” you ask? In most cases, that would be an open-ended question. That is, one that can’t be answered with a simple grunt or yes or no response. It will usually start with “what, why, or how” and provoke deeper thinking about an issue than a one-syllable response can reveal. They are never statements or directives  disguised as a question like, “Don’t you think you should try Plan B?” or, “I like the first alternative. How about you?” or, “This is the way to go, don’t you think?”

Good capacity-building questions also leave out derogatory endings even subtle ones like a silent “seriously?,” “really?” or “you dummy.” Like this one: “So you really think this is all going to work out?”

Read it again, this time out loud,.“So you really think this is all going to work out?”

Did you hear the doubt or accusation in the question—the silent, “you dummy?“ That’s another superhero behavior suggesting team members are incapable and the leader needs to take over. These kinds of questions do not support capacity-building, so let’s just drop them into the compactor. Good learning questions stimulate thinking, creativity, and commitment.  They don’t dampen them.

As we said, open-ended questions spark more thoughtful answers.

Here are six open-ended questions to get you started. They should soon be well-worn, but sharp, tools in your managerial toolbox.

• What do you know about this situation and what else do you need to know?

This question invites the team member or team to avoid reacting, to look at the data or go out and collect it, and to acknowledge that the responsibility has shifted from the team leader to the team.

• What does the data tell you about how you should approach this problem and who you should involve?

This question builds collaboration, an analytical orientation, and accountability. Note the emphasis on “you.”

• What have you tried so far and what were the results?

Here, we encourage broad consideration of previous successes and failures to speed the decision process.

• If you are on the receiving end of this, what would be the most helpful and satisfying for you? Or what would be best for the business?

This is an opportunity to invite empathy for the customer experience and others affected by the decision and to keep the big picture in mind.

• What are some of the best ways to accomplish this and what do you need from me?

This question helps the decision maker consider tools and techniques for making a decision and to be mindful that you are there to help when there are actions needed outside of the team’s reach. Warning: Be careful to not take over or do things the team could reasonably do for itself.

• What challenges do you anticipate with this decision (or direction) and how do you plan to address or mitigate them?

This question teaches risk analysis and mitigation. It may offer opportunities for you to introduce risk tools to the team. Again, resist the temptation to “help” with the decision and take over. Also, teach that decision tools are only to aid decision making, not take over the responsibility.

• Here’s a cheater question (or call it a bonus): Who needs to be kept in the loop and what’s the best way to do that?

An important aspect of accountability is reporting. Not everything needs to be reported or tracked. Some in-the-moment decisions simply need to be taken and acted upon. But, generally speaking, those who will be affected by decisions, fellow team members, and other accountable parties, like leaders, should be included in reporting processes.  Asking this question opens up an opportunity to teach this accountability principle.

To recap, questions in the form of Ask, Don’t Tell practices, can be powerful tools for building team and team member capacity and overcoming any superhero leader tendencies. Building capacity is a great way to increase engagement and accountability within the team and increase team self-management.  It can free you up to work on bigger issues beyond the reach of your team members that substantially impact business unit success.

My challenge to you is to begin using these six questions to build your team’s capacity over the next 2 weeks and then send me a quick note and let me know how it is working for you. I look forward to hearing from you!

Kevin Herring is co-author of Practical Guide for Internal Consultants, and President of Ascent Management Consulting. Kevin can be contacted at kevinh@ascentmgt.com.

Ascent Management Consulting is found at www.ascentmgt.com and specializes in performance turnarounds, leadership coaching, and appraisal-less performance management.