How the Questions You Ask Could Be Demotivating Your Team and What to Do About It as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader
Could the way you're asking questions be quietly holding your team back?
If your team feels dependent, unmotivated, or stuck in old patterns, it might not be a skills issue—it could be your leadership questions. This episode explores how the quality of your questions, not just your instructions, may be the hidden factor limiting your team's development and confidence.
In this episode you'll discover:
- 5 clear signs your questions are unintentionally demotivating your team
- Learn what makes a low-quality question—and how to instantly shift it into a high-quality one
- Understand the neuroscience-backed reason great questions can boost productivity and reduce stress
Listen now to learn how asking better questions can unlock your team’s potential—and make your leadership feel a whole lot easier.
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:
The hidden way you may be sabotaging your team's development. Find out what it is and what you can do about it on 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.
welcome my modern NGO Leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week, and I've been thinking a lot about the impact of the quality of the questions we ask. And in particular this came up for me recently, not only because I teach it all the [00:01:00] time, but also because when we are using tools like AI tools such as chat GPT.
The quality of the responses that we receive from Chat GPT or these AI tools is directly related to the quality of the questions that we ask. And what is really fascinating to me, the more I learn about the impact of the questions we ask, and the difference that a low quality versus a high quality question can make.
Not only the kinds of questions we ask others, but also the questions we ask ourselves can be the difference between motivation and stagnation between growth and a fixed mindset. So in today's [00:02:00] episode you're going to discover the symptoms that indicate that you may be asking low quality questions to your team.
The science behind why questions you ask are so important and what makes a low versus a high quality question? And once you are aware of that, you can start to become more aware of the types of questions you ask and how to make them higher quality. All right, so let's start with the symptoms, shall we?
So the symptoms of a team that is being asked low quality questions or that you might be asking low quality questions to your team is a team that is not motivated, a team that is dependent on you for answers. In other words, they come to you to seek solutions or for your advice. [00:03:00] A team that is not proactive. A team that is not innovative or bringing or trying new ideas, and they keep making the same mistakes.
All of these are signs that you probably are asking low quality questions. And you're probably thinking " wow, Torrey, how is that possible that all of these things are related to the way we ask questions?" Believe it or not, they are. And that's why I thought it would be interesting to also delve into the science behind this before I give you some ways to ask higher quality questions.
So before I go into any of that. I also just wanna say that there is no perfect question. A lot of times my students in becoming the modern humanitarian and development leader course, where I teach coaching skills to leaders, and a lot of that involves how to [00:04:00] ask high quality questions. A lot of them think that there is a perfect question that they need to find and that thought or that belief can really paralyze you.
So I want you to eliminate that from your head. However you need to do it, just delete it because there is no perfect question. Alright, let's go to the science and then I'll get into the how. So the science behind asking powerful questions so fascinating. There was a study that was done, which compared two groups of students.
Both groups were studying for the same exam On the same timeline. One group of students were asked lower quality questions, which really focused on compliance. For example, "have you done this?" Or "when are you going to do that?" Or " how is the studying going?" That kind of thing. The other [00:05:00] group of students was asked higher quality questions.
Questions which were much more open, which were related to their goals. Like "how will passing this exam help you in your future?" "What are your goals for the future?" Those types of questions. The idea was to compare the results on the exams of the two groups of students to see if there was a significant difference.
And unbelievably, there was. The group that had the lower quality questions actually performed lower than the group that was asked the higher quality questions. And actually that same group that was asked the lower quality questions also demonstrated more signs of stress, de-motivation lack of productivity and so on, whereas the higher quality question group did much better on the exam and also was more motivated. They were higher [00:06:00] performing obviously with the exam scores, but also more productive in how they studied.
So this is the type of impact that we can also translate to our teams in the workplace, if we ask low quality questions to our team, we can create a more stressful environment where they don't feel like they can share their ideas, where they feel like they can't make mistakes, where they feel like they are dependent on you as a leader.
These are all things that asking the wrong types of questions can lead to. Whereas higher quality questions can lead to the opposite, can lead to a team that's motivated, that's independent, proactive, more confident. So it really is important to pay attention to the types of questions that we ask our team.
And this is easier said than done, even though you can definitely become more aware and more [00:07:00] intentional about the types of questions you ask, my observation is that some of my students, they don't even realize when they are asking lower quality questions, even when they understand what they are.
So sometimes it helps to have a third party help you identify and give you feedback on when you are using lower quality questions. That's why I have this all structured in my course "Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and development leader" in order to help my students identify when they're using these low quality questions because sometimes they're not even aware.
That said, awareness or just knowing what is a low quality versus high quality question is a big first step. So let's get into, first of all what are lower quality questions? And then I really wanna spend more time on the quality questions, which are basically just the opposite. [00:08:00] So once again, low quality questions can lead to increased stress levels.
And usually they are closed questions. That is yes or no answer, or one word answer.
Also questions that you ask, but you already know the answer to. For example, questions you're asking to test your team. Those are usually lower quality questions. Questions that are accusatory or judgmental. And this goes into the whole idea of how questions can be stressful is when we are asking them in a blaming or a shaming way. And I'll go more into that later as well as questions that are directing or leading to a certain answer.
Quality questions. These are the opposites. So these are the types of questions you want to try to focus on asking, because they will create more motivation, more [00:09:00] innovation in your team. So the kind of question that is open, right?
The opposite of closed is open. Most of your questions, the quality questions will be open questions that come from curiosity. When we're asking a question from curiosity, it's because we want to understand something about the other person, and we also want to learn in some way. And that also means that we don't already know the answer to the question when we ask it, right?
We ask a question because we genuinely wanna know what is the other person's perspective or something that we don't already know ourselves. So it's not a question to test them or to test what they know or to test to see if they will come up with the same solution that we would use to solve a problem.
But it's to be curious about their way and their perspective and their unique approach to solving a problem. Also there are [00:10:00] questions that are not accusatory or judgemental. A lot of times I hear that the word "why" should not be used in coaching. And I get it right, because usually when we ask why it can be f like we're interrogating someone, like we're wanting to know why did you do that? Or there's like a root cause that we want to find out of what happened here. But I disagree with that. I actually think that it's not the word itself, it's the way we ask it. So why coming from a place of curiosity can look very different from why coming from a place of blame.
So instead of why did you do that, it could be. Huh? Why do you think you did that? And those two tones alone can lead to a very different feeling from your team member and very different answers. A lot of times when we ask questions in a judgmental way, we're going to shut down the other [00:11:00] person from even wanting to answer them.
So questions that are not judgmental are also ones where, once again, are coming from curiosity and wanting to know, because when we're not judging it means that we are not knowing, right? The definition of judgment is assuming or knowing something. So when we come from a place of not knowing or curiosity, then by nature our questions will be better.
Also, the other one that I see a lot of leaders make in terms of a mistake with asking questions. Is asking a question, thinking that, okay, I'm asking questions, I'm coaching my team, or I am, helping them to become better problem solvers. But the questions that they are asking are actually leading or directing the conversation.
And what I mean by that [00:12:00] is in their question, the way they're asking their question, they're actually giving advice. So anytime you start a question with, have you tried or what if you did this, or something along those lines, or How about you try this, or, those kinds of questions. Those, when you think about it, the beginning of that question, have you tried or how about you do this?
Is actually leading the person to a certain outcome or a certain response, right? Is giving advice through your question. And that's something that is not what we want to do when we are coaching or when we are trying to create a more proactive, a more independent team. We actually want to ask questions and once again, when we ask questions from an open place, from [00:13:00] curiosity, they're less likely to be leading.
They're less likely to be directing, and so more likely to be high quality questions.
Alright, so once again, sometimes this can be difficult to identify when you're not used to observing yourself asking questions. So I want you to try to be aware of the types of questions that you're asking this week, and are they low quality or high quality questions? And once again, what makes a quality a high quality question is one that we don't know the answer to.
One that's open, that comes from a place of curiosity and wanting to understand the other person and one that is not leading and not judgemental. Alright, that's about it for this week. Please try this out and notice if you see a difference as well with the way your team responds when you [00:14:00] change the types of questions you ask them.
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 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 [00:15:00] Thank you for it.