When confronting a complex or challenging issue, seeking the guidance of your leader can be a smart call.
Not only can their insight and experience make a difference, but inquiring about their viewpoint can lay the foundation for a stronger relationship.
Leaders naturally like to be asked what they think and enjoy the respect and deference they feel when asked for their opinion. They typically think more highly of those team members who are wise enough to seek their input.
But how a direct report asks for that advice can make a world of difference.
Asking a leader for their viewpoint, approach, perspective, and experience is the best call. Anything more specific can limit the team member’s options.
Nothing is more insulting to a leader than asking for an opinion and then ignoring it. So, it is more strategic tosolicit a broader view.
How a leader would approach the problem, how their experience suggests thinking about it, what perspectives or frames they would apply, and what they have seen work well in the past are all sound inquiries.
Ideally, it is best not to ask leaders to opine about specific options or choices. Once they land on a preferred option, the team member now faces a directive disguised as advice.
Keeping the discussion about the problem broad and focused on the way they would approach it normally doesn’t encourage leaders to stake out a clear-cut position.
If, by chance, the leader insists on giving specific guidance in the form of a plan or action, then it is important for the team member to instantly thank them and to respond that it is worth considering, without committing to it.
If you don’t choose to follow that advice, then it is essential that you circle back and explain why before executing the decision. Data, more information, and additional context can be used to soften the blow and to articulate why the leader’s advice was negated.
It is neither weak nor indecisive to ask your leader for their view before working through a difficult issue. But how they respond can become overly constrictive if the question encourages them to be so.
By asking for a more general discussion of the problem and their experience in tackling it, team members can avoid being tied to a specific option or choice. It’s all in how you ask the question.
Think approach, not action.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
