Tania Fowler Guest Blog - Credentials
Do Credentials Stop Questions?
Posted on December 10, 2012
I have this theory (untested mind you) that one of the reasons that organizations continue to suffer consequences and that well-known leaders/officials flame out, so often by their own hand, is that their highly regarded credentials intimidate people into leaving them alone. One of the biggest points I hit on as a coach with clients is to ask more questions, to stop telling people what to do, and start putting their work back on them by taking a couple of minutes to ask some well-placed questions that require the other party to think a problem through. And, at the very least, to give a few minutes to uncovering possible unintended consequences. You can’t safeguard everything and I am not suggesting that you can, but you can try to be a better critical thinker and ask good questions.
But who is asking our leaders thoughtful, critical questions? I have listened in to conference calls where leaders are asked their view on something and the people asking are satisfied without asking a single probing question to see the thinking behind the answer. You might be thinking, “well that is what you pay them for, why ask questions of them, we have already vetted their brilliance many times over?” And that is surely what most people are thinking, along with not wanting to be presumptuous or look foolish. But asking some well-placed questions to get at the heart of assumptions for decisions takes little time and can be worth a lot. I give you the financial collapse of the decade of the 2000’s where interests of money trumped reason and ‘the best and the brightest’ made vastly poor assumptions backed by the highest levels of power in Washington signing off on those assumptions. These people went to Harvard, Princeton, and MIT for goodness sake, what could be wrong? The credentials from these storied institutions keep the questions at bay, safely inoculating the holders of said credentials from scrutiny.
Companies like HP and Hostess are other recent, good examples of CEO hubris and Board of Director dysfunction where guiding principles of asking tough questions appear to be missing. The media focuses on the low hanging fruit for explanations of what went wrong (what the C suite PR machine puts out) but if they spent some time asking people inside the companies what the problems are you would get some solid answers. They know. But the credentials of the people at the top intimidate the people doing the checking from asking those critical questions. Over and over again.
The better people are at navigating the PR world for themselves, the safer they are…for a while. But being insulated in a world of your greatness can eventually be your undoing as Frank Rich so brilliantly tackles this month in his column.
As leaders, people must do their best to put their egos aside. Frame the story of Icarus on your wall and remember that wings of wax will melt under the forces of nature, and that nature includes you. Let people, no, require people to ask you good, critical questions if for no other reason than to keep you humble and hopefully on a better track for you and your organization. That is, after all, why you’re credentials got you there.
Posted on December 10, 2012
I have this theory (untested mind you) that one of the reasons that organizations continue to suffer consequences and that well-known leaders/officials flame out, so often by their own hand, is that their highly regarded credentials intimidate people into leaving them alone. One of the biggest points I hit on as a coach with clients is to ask more questions, to stop telling people what to do, and start putting their work back on them by taking a couple of minutes to ask some well-placed questions that require the other party to think a problem through. And, at the very least, to give a few minutes to uncovering possible unintended consequences. You can’t safeguard everything and I am not suggesting that you can, but you can try to be a better critical thinker and ask good questions.
But who is asking our leaders thoughtful, critical questions? I have listened in to conference calls where leaders are asked their view on something and the people asking are satisfied without asking a single probing question to see the thinking behind the answer. You might be thinking, “well that is what you pay them for, why ask questions of them, we have already vetted their brilliance many times over?” And that is surely what most people are thinking, along with not wanting to be presumptuous or look foolish. But asking some well-placed questions to get at the heart of assumptions for decisions takes little time and can be worth a lot. I give you the financial collapse of the decade of the 2000’s where interests of money trumped reason and ‘the best and the brightest’ made vastly poor assumptions backed by the highest levels of power in Washington signing off on those assumptions. These people went to Harvard, Princeton, and MIT for goodness sake, what could be wrong? The credentials from these storied institutions keep the questions at bay, safely inoculating the holders of said credentials from scrutiny.
Companies like HP and Hostess are other recent, good examples of CEO hubris and Board of Director dysfunction where guiding principles of asking tough questions appear to be missing. The media focuses on the low hanging fruit for explanations of what went wrong (what the C suite PR machine puts out) but if they spent some time asking people inside the companies what the problems are you would get some solid answers. They know. But the credentials of the people at the top intimidate the people doing the checking from asking those critical questions. Over and over again.
The better people are at navigating the PR world for themselves, the safer they are…for a while. But being insulated in a world of your greatness can eventually be your undoing as Frank Rich so brilliantly tackles this month in his column.
As leaders, people must do their best to put their egos aside. Frame the story of Icarus on your wall and remember that wings of wax will melt under the forces of nature, and that nature includes you. Let people, no, require people to ask you good, critical questions if for no other reason than to keep you humble and hopefully on a better track for you and your organization. That is, after all, why you’re credentials got you there.
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