How To Ask More Powerful Questions

“I got this.”

This was my go-to line when I knew what I was doing and wanted to get my boss off my back. What I couldn’t see was how it highlighted a major mistake. I wasn’t evaluating the situation, I wasn’t asking questions. I assumed I knew all the answers, and I was usually wrong.

I didn’t realize the error in my ways until a major client rollout flopped and I had no one to blame but myself — my own stubborn belief that “I got this,” even though I clearly didn’t.

In a debrief with my boss, he said, “Aaron, when you say 'I got this' and have no concerns about a situation, that is when I get concerned.”

What he meant was that as soon as I stop asking compelling questions, I assume I know what’s going to work and stop evaluating potential outcomes and solutions. It’s a tendency we all have when we want to take the quick route. It’s what holds us back from being powerful leaders.

Why is asking powerful questions an essential leadership habit?

It provides leaders with a means to mitigate their confirmation biases and dive deep into the evaluation of a situation, a person or their team as a whole.

I had biases for how the rollout was going to play out. I’d done this before; I knew what was going to happen, so why should I look further into it? I wish I could say this was unique to me, but we all do this. Our brains are wired to jump to outcomes, to look for shortcuts.

Not sure if this relates to you? Watch this quick video to test yourself.

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist who was the first to highlight these biases, states, “Confirmation bias comes from when you have an interpretation, and you adopt it, and then, top down, you force everything to fit that interpretation.”

This bias can be disastrous for leaders; it can hinder their decision making ability and blindside them completely. Asking powerful questions is our way around it. It can help us avoid this common miscalculation.

What does a powerful question look like?

I’m going to share a definition of and the criteria for a powerful question, but I also want to be clear there is no script for asking a powerful question. Powerful questions evoke clarity, create greater possibility, reveal new learning and generate action. Here are a few ways to determine if a question is powerful or not.

A powerful question …

• Is open-ended: Ask what, when or how instead of asking a yes or no question.

• Comes from a beginner’s mindset: Start by telling yourself, “I don’t know the answer.”

• Is clear and succinct: Keep it simple, don’t use too many words.

• Is impactful: It’s important to remember that not every question in a conversation should be powerful. In a 30-minute conversation, aim for 2-3 powerful questions.

• Happens in the moment: Here is probably the most crucial point to remember about powerful questioning. You can’t plan it! Formulaic questions outlined before the conversation won’t work. You have to be in the moment.

There is no script for asking powerful questions. There is, however, an often-overlooked trait that will set you up to ask powerful questions in any situation.

What’s the trait?

Curiosity. Want to discover a master of curiosity? Find any 3-year old and watch them for an hour. They ask what, why and how to nearly everything they see in the world around them. They want to know more and do not limit themselves to the societal expectations of what’s right or wrong. They just ask.

As we get older, we are trained to lose our curiosity when it becomes clear it’s not acceptable to ask all the questions that come to mind. Instead, we go about our days having surface-level conversations, rarely digging more in-depth with a co-worker, client or even a friend.

The secret to asking more powerful questions is digging deeper. It’s triggering our 3-year old selves and reconnecting with our curiosity.

I found it hard to come up with a way to share this concept with you. I realized it’s so hard to explain because, as adults, there are very few situations where we are curious. Then I remembered riddles. They are a great way to bring the curiosity right back. Try this one out.

“What has a head, a tail, is brown and has no legs?”

As you are reading this, trying to figure out the answer, your mind is swirling with questions and possibilities.

What kind of animal has no legs?

Is it an animal?

What else could it be?

What sorts of things have tails?

The series of questions running through your head is your curiosity showing up. It’s the little kid inside of you wanting to understand, to know. Curiosity is the genuine desire to learn more -- to explore.

To be able to evaluate people, teams or situations with greater fidelity, go back to the curious part of you that wants to explore. Instead of restricting yourself, open yourself up and allow your mind to ask any question.

Allow yourself to ask the powerful questions. You already have them in you.

Sometimes it may take priming yourself with a riddle to get you there.

“What has a head, a tail, is brown and has no legs?”

A penny.

Questions & Concerns

To help, we've created a brief overview of RCM that should explain the main changes and impact for regular staff members.

What is RCM?RCM stands for Responsibility Center Management. It is a more transparent, decentralized budget model that better enables academic and administrative units to plan, prepare and support university activities by giving each unit control over the income it generates and the expenses it incurs.

The advantages of RCM are that it encourages revenue generation and cost-effectiveness, promotes entrepreneurial thinking, aligns authority with accountability, improves responsiveness to change, enhances the ability to plan and increases revenue transparency.

What does that mean?It should simplify accounting and make financial planning more straightforward. It should also encourage more strategic thinking and effective use of funds.

Why do we need it?For many years UAB's financial model has been complicated. A position might be partially funded by 2-3 different departments, schools never know exactly how much of the money they generate they will receive, and general services can't be billed directly and are built into other charges.

For instance, no-one is charged for wi-fi but it's necessary for the campus to function. It's not free to provide high speed internet access to over 20,000 people, so the cost for wi-fi was built in to other services from IT, but that makes it hard to establish actual cost to provide and support a service, while artificially inflating other costs.

What will change?If you're not already dealing directly with revenue/finances for your department, you probably will not notice any changes.

Units will have greater operational authority, allowing them to prioritize their academic missions in support of the UAB strategic plan.

Instead of tuition being paid to central administration and then a portion being dispersed to the units, each unit will retain its own tuition revenue and instead pay a portion back to the Provost to support general operations (e.g. Student Affairs, Enrollment Operations and other non-revenue-generating areas). Units will also be responsible for their own expenses.

Who was involved in the planning?Three committees were established to look at all the aspects of RCM.

Where can I find out more?Check out the RCM website.

FEMA Representative Answers Council’s Questions

Julia Barron, Federal Emergency Management Agency grant project manager, answered questions from City Council members regarding the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant during a special meeting on Tuesday. Pictured are City Council members and a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Screenshot by Timothy Frudd

A meeting with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials may not result in much clarity as City Council members mull approval of a SAFER grant to hire additional firefighters.

Council members held a special meeting with a grant project manager representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Tuesday to finalize answers pertaining to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant.

Julia Barron, FEMA grant project manager, told City Council members that in order to receive the $1.8 million in SAFER grant funding, the Jamestown Fire Department would have to add the eight full-time positions.

“When you accept a grant award, you’re accepting the terms and conditions of the award, including the information that’s in the Notice of Funding Opportunity Announcement,” she said. “On the last page of that Notice of Funding Opportunity Announcement, it indicates when you accept the award, you accept the requirements to maintain the number of full-time operational firefighter positions that you have on the date of grant award plus the additional positions that were awarded under the grant for a full number of operational full-time equivalent positions that would be maintained during the grant’s three-year period of performance, so yes, you do have to hire the eight.”

Asked about the city’s minimum required roster number of firefighters through the grant program, Barron said the minimum roster number would be established at 62, which would include 54 full-time firefighters that were listed on the operational roster at the date of the grant award, plus the eight firefighters that would be hired under the SAFER grant program. The grant “period of performance” would begin in August of this year and would run until August of 2026. During that time, the city would be required to maintain 62 total firefighters.

“A lot of grant recipients that I work with, they’re not able to hit that number consistently,” she said. “They’re taking steps. It’s sort of a fluctuating process, as I’m sure you know, you have a number of firefighters and then what happens is there’s resignations, there’s retirements, there’s that natural attrition that happens.”

Barron said that while the city would be required to maintain the 62 total firefighters, the grant program allows for the the “fluctuating process,” along as the city is taking “active and timely steps” to achieve that number. She added that the city would be required to provide periodic performance reports to show that steps are being taken to fill any open positions.

Addressing the goal of the SAFER grant, Barron said the point is to help city’s increase compliance by increasing the number of firefighters in the community in a timely manner.

“We want to increase to put those firefighters in a safer, better position in order to respond to those emergencies,” she said. “The grant is written to say, ‘We were at this level, and with the SAFER firefighters, we’re going to increase this level of compliance, we’re going to get so much more firefighters out there acting quickly, helping the public and responding safely with the correct number of people.'”

Asked whether the city would be eligible to apply for another SAFER grant after the three year program and what the likelihood of the city receiving another SAFER grant would be, Barron said the city would “certainly” be eligible to reapply for the grant.

“We have folks that apply each year,” she said. “That sort of depends on what the local support is for sustaining those positions. You’re writing the grant in order for it to be accepted, so you’re putting yourself into a position of potentially receiving that grant when you apply for it.”

However, while the city would be eligible to apply for another SAFER grant, Barron explained that every grant is separate, and a separate staffing level is included with each grant. As a result, Barron said the city would have to be aware of its current staffing level when it applies for another SAFER grant award. As an example, Barron said that if the city had 62 firefighters on the roster under the SAFER grant and applied again next year, requesting funding for an additional eight positions would result in a staffing level of 70 firefighters, instead of 62, if the previous firefighters had not yet left.

Regarding the City Council’s questions about applying for another grant in three years to retain the eight firefighters included in the SAFER grant, Barron said that “if the grant rules allow,” the city would be eligible to apply for a grant to retain the firefighters; however, she said there are a “lot of tricky rules” pertaining to the retention of positions.

“You have to issue them a layoff notice within a certain period of time, and you can’t lay off during the current grant,” she said. “It starts to get a little bit tricky in terms of retaining these exact same positions, versus hiring new and sort of allowing attrition to happen, and just adding on with new firefighters…It’s a little bit complicated to try and retain these exact same positions, especially like I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to sell that to the grant reviewers because it’s not an automatic thing.”

If the city wanted to reapply for another SAFER grant to retain the positions in three years, Barron said it would have to go through the full application process and “convince” the fire service reviewers that the city was facing economic hardships that would prevent it from maintaining the positions after the three-year grant period despite including a plan to sustain the positions after the conclusion of the grant program.

Asked by City Councilwoman Kim Ecklund, R-At Large, if it would be “safe to assume” that the city could not easily keep the eight firefighters under the SAFER grant program while reapplying for another SAFER grant, Barron said, “I think it’s safe to assume it would be not easy.”

Barron said that toward the end of the three-year grant period, she would potentially have better information regarding how the city could best position itself to reapply for the SAFER grant.

“If you’re successful one time, it definitely means that you have a competitive grant application, but then I’ve also had people apply every single year and not receive it or they receive it one year and are unable to get it ever again,” she said. “It’s just a very competitive grant program.”

With FEMA turning down “hundreds of applications,” Barron congratulated the city for being awarded the SAFER grant, explaining that it is a “big deal” to receive the grant, especially since the city was only offered the grant award due to extra applicants being approved with additional American Rescue Plan Act funding in FEMA’s grant program.

The City Council is expected to vote Monday on the resolution that would lift the hiring freeze and

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