Why the Questions You Ask May Prevent Your Team's Growth and What to Do About It as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Are the questions you ask your team limiting their growth and independence?

As a NGO leader, your job isn't just to get answers — it's to empower your team to think for themselves. But what if your well-meaning questions are undermining their confidence and slowing their development?

In this episode you'll discover:

• Learn the subtle but critical difference between test questions and coaching questions.
• How to ask questions that promote critical thinking and independence — not dependence on you.
• Examples of common “leadership traps” and how to replace them with questions that lead to empowered, high-performing teams.

Listen now to start shifting your leadership questions from control to true empowerment — and watch your team thrive.

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Are you asking questions that keep your team from growing? Find out in today's episode.

Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my modern NGO leader. I hope you're having a great week. In today's episode, you're going to discover why the questions you ask [00:01:00] may be preventing your team's growth without you even realizing it. The characteristics of helpful questions that create a more confident and higher performance team, and common examples of how we may be asking questions that prevent our team's growth.

So the way I've broken this down today is basically that there are two types of questions that a lot of times I've observed leaders ask, and these are either testing questions or coaching questions. So testing questions are ones which we ask to test if our team knows the answer to something or a way of doing something in a certain way, and they are also a way that we might give our team advice or tell them what to do through the question [00:02:00] or through our own answer to the question.

So a lot of times we are directing the conversation when we ask testing questions, and it means that we learn if they know the answer to the question. So sometimes these can be helpful questions. For example, if we want to understand how much our team knows about budget comparison reports, we might ask questions, which allow us to see how much they really understand about that.

But a lot of times it also is really meant for just understanding their amount of, of how much knowledge they have around something, but it does not help them grow or move forward. It does not incite confidence or curiosity because the questions we're asking are questions that [00:03:00] we probably already know the answer to.

And we are also purely testing the other person to see if they know the answer or if they think like us, but we already know what we want them to say, and that is the big key here, is that when we ask a test question. Or a question to test our team, it's to understand what they know. But a lot of times we already have in mind what we hope or what we want them to say and how we want them to answer that question.

So in other words, we already think we know the answer. Or maybe we do, but we are asking the question purely to test the other person's knowledge or understanding, which is great to have a baseline, uh, idea of how much they know, but not so great for their own growth and development. So, in other words, we are not encouraging [00:04:00] them through our questions to think of new ideas or to think for themselves and solve problems in their own way, which is what coaching questions do.

So coaching questions are ones that help our team develop and grow. And the big difference here is when we ask a coaching question and I spend, you know, a few weeks on this in my course, becoming the modern humanitarian and development leader is what makes a coaching question, what makes a question powerful.

And one of the things that I've noticed. Over the last few years of teaching this, is that the best types of coaching questions we ask are the ones where we don't know the answer. So it means you are not directing the conversation. You are not [00:05:00] trying to test someone else's knowledge.

You're not trying to get them to think like you or to give them advice. You are actually asking them a question for the sake of their own. Answer their own individual unique way of doing something, which is what will help their growth and development. Because confidence comes from believing in yourself and your own way and how you would do something.

So it's not, confidence does not come from our. Our supervisor are telling us what to do. It comes from us believing in our own way of doing something and feeling like we can handle, uh, whatever comes up in the process. So this is how a coaching conversations are different from our everyday uh, conversations.

Is that ideally all the questions that you ask when you're in a coach approach, what I call coach approach, leadership [00:06:00] style, are the ones that you don't know that answer to. They're the ones ideally, if you take this to the next level in even more advanced level, all the questions that you ask your team when you are coaching them are only known by that individual person.

So let me give you an example because I think that this will all help to understand this better. So, for example, when we ask a question about our teams like, or a person that we are coaching their thoughts or feelings about a situation that is a question that we are not going to know the answer to.

Like, how do you feel about doing this? Or, what assumptions might you be making with this? These are questions that we will not know. The answer [00:07:00] to because they are actually tailored or that person is the only one who can really be able, who can really articulate their own thoughts and feelings. They're the only one in the entire planet that has the answer to that.

We cannot tell someone how they are thinking or feeling. We do not know, and that's why a question where we're asking about how do you feel about doing this presentation, for example, is a question that only they can answer. We cannot answer for them. So when we ask that question, it is a useful coaching question because number one, we don't know the answer to it.

And number two, it helps both us and the person we are coaching to understand how they're to be more aware of their feelings around doing something and what might [00:08:00] be in the way of them taking action. So here are some more specific or examples that might help you further. So let's say that your direct report comes to you, one of your team members, and they say they want to be better at managing multiple tasks at once.

That they're struggling to get everything done during work hours, and so they want to come up with a way where they can be more productive. So if you were asking a test question, you might ask them, how could you use your planner to manage multiple tasks? Now, the reason that this is a test question is because it's directive.

In other words, it really limits. The way this conversation can go, because what we are basically asking is, or suggesting is that they use their planner to solve this problem. And so we are directing the [00:09:00] conversation. We're suggesting that the planner is the solution to the problem and. The problem with this is that there might be an even better solution for this person, or maybe this person does not like using a calendar.

Uh, you are making an assumption when you ask this question and you are directing the, the conversation to managing tasks through a planner. You're making the assumption that this person. This is the best way to solve this problem for them. And it may not be, and this is what I see with a lot of new coaches or a lot of leaders, is that when we ask a question like this, we are actually, we think that we're asking a, an a helpful question, but it's actually wasting time because we are.

Directing the conversation, and it might not [00:10:00] even be the way the conversation would go if we ask a more open coaching question where we don't necessarily need or know the answer. Because when we ask a question like, how could you user planner to manage multiple tasks, were basically. Suggesting that they use their planner to manage multiple tasks.

We are giving them advice or a question and we are directing, um, and, and testing maybe their knowledge around using a planner for managing multiple tasks, but that might not work best for them, and it's also limiting the conversation. So a more helpful way of coaching, uh, this person would be asking a coaching question like, what is getting in the way of you managing multiple tasks at once?

When we ask a question like this, then it's more open. It's coming purely from [00:11:00] curiosity. We cannot answer that question ourselves because we don't know the answer to it, and we're not giving advice. We're not telling them what to do. We're being curious about. What is the obstacle here? What is the challenge here that's getting in the way of you being able to do what you want?

And when we know the answer to that, then we can ask again, you know, well, how might you overcome that? So also not being directive or limiting the way the conversation can go, but keeping it open, allowing them to come up with the best solutions that work for them and not things that are suggested by us.

So it's a subtle difference, but it makes a big difference in the conversation is the difference between a question that is essentially telling them what to do versus a question that is getting them to think for themselves, become more [00:12:00] independent, and developing them as a person and as a team member.

This is why this is so important to really understand the types of questions we're asking, and like I said, this is something that we go into depth in the the course that I teach because it's something that a lot of leaders don't even realize that they're doing. I. So, another example might be that let's say your team member says they need to delegate more, but they are concerned that the work that they delegate will not get done or will not get done at the quality that they want it to.

So if we are asking a test question here, you might ask or, or say, tell me how you currently delegate, or how do you currently delegate? Right. That's a test question. The reason is because we're asking it just to understand what they know, right? Their current process of delegation. [00:13:00] But it doesn't help them because they already know how they delegate and it doesn't really help the conversation if we're getting them to try to think for themselves.

So. It's likely that this question might be asked because you want to know what they're doing or not doing so that you can give them advice, right? So you can make suggestions, which is okay, but if you want to build a more empowered team, once again, a more independent team, this is not a helpful way of doing it.

The coaching question might be something like how do you know that the work will not get done or will not be done at the quality that you want? In other words, you're taking the words based on what they said and asking, how do you know this? What is the evidence behind it? [00:14:00] And the reason we would ask a question like that is because we're questioning an assumption they're making.

They're making an assumption, perhaps. Perhaps they have evidence for it too, which we would learn through this question, but it sounds like they might be making an assumption that if they delegate to their team, that the work will not get done. So being curious about what is the reason behind this? Why do you think that way?

It's not a fact that your work will not get done. It's an assumption, it's an opinion, it's a perspective. So this question, asking a question like why or how do you know this to be true? Is a way that of asking a question that is not directing the conversation, it's being curious about what they've already said, and we're not giving advice and we don't know the answer because we do not know why they think this way.

[00:15:00] Right? So that's a difference between test questions and coaching questions. Once again, test questions are directive. They may only have one answer, and a lot of times when we ask them as leaders or supervisors, it's because we're testing someone's knowledge and we want them to to answer the question the same way we would answer it.

And there is a time for test questions. Like if you are trying to understand the depth of someone's knowledge around a certain subject, then test questions can be very helpful. So I'm not saying that you should never ask them, but they don't encourage the person's growth and development, they merely look at what do they already know?

When we're encouraging a person's growth and development, we would use coaching questions, which are more open, [00:16:00] curious, are asked without an answer in mind, and the other person that you are asking the question may be the only one on the planet that can answer that question. Not always, but the best types of questions, they are the only one that will answer or be able to answer it because it's about their perspective, their feelings, their thoughts, or their way of doing something which everyone else doesn't know.

Because every one of us is unique and that is also the beauty of coaching, is that we appreciate each individual and the way that we are all unique. So even if we have an idea of what we might do in a certain situation, like someone comes to us with a problem and we have an idea of how we might solve it, if we are curious about the other person's way, so we put aside our way and we think, okay, I want to hear their way.[00:17:00]

And I don't know their way, so I need to ask about it and acknowledge that they may know better because they are in the situation and we are not. They are closer to the problem. This may lead to a completely different solution than we would've thought of ourselves, and also has the benefit of growing the confidence and empowering our team member to

think for themselves, to become more confident in their own way, and also to really feel like they're contributing through their own ideas.

So one final thing I'll let, I'll leave you with here, and that is that we don't ask questions, especially when we're coaching. We don't ask questions just to ask questions. There is a purpose behind the questions that we [00:18:00] ask, and this is also what I teach in my coaching process in the course, is that there is a structure to the conversation and that also we ask questions to help someone get closer to what they want.

So we're not just asking questions just randomly. There's a specific process that we go through in order to help this person achieve what they want, overcome the obstacles to achieving what they want, so that they can grow to an even higher performing and more impactful team member. All right, so I hope this gives you something to think about as you are asking questions this week I want you to be curious about your own questions and the types of questions you ask. Are you asking more test questions of your team or are you asking more coaching questions? [00:19:00] And how could you maybe balance more? So most supervisors or leaders are probably asking more test questions than they are coaching questions.

So how can you shift to ask more coaching type questions? Once again, open and you do not know the answer to, and they're coming from curiosity and from learning about the other person's way so that you can really, truly promote your team's growth and development. Alright, until next week, keep evolving.

Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately [00:20:00] find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.