The poet E. E. Cummings wrote this as the introduction to his 1938 Collected Poems. It's a deceptively simple idea — and one of the most powerful principles I know for leading in today's complex and dynamic world.
A good friend and mentor, Craig Ross, taught me that the mind can't resist a question. Let's test that:
What colour is your car?
I'm betting you couldn't help but think of it. That's the power of a well-placed question — it directs attention, almost involuntarily.
As a leader, you have a choice when your team faces a challenge. You can tell them what to do. But then they're executing your plan, your solution. And when they hit trouble — and they always do — they'll look to you to move forward.
Or you can use your experience and expertise to ask the right questions.
Questions are like a searchlight — shifting the group's focus to perspectives they hadn'tconsidered. They're like a key in a lock — opening up the ideas and insights already inside the team. They're like charging a battery — building the energy and engagement needed to take action.
Collectively, your team already knows a great deal about what needs to be done. The rightquestion helps them find it.
So many times in my career as a senior R&D leader, a well-chosen question from a colleague would stop me in my tracks — disrupting my thinking just enough to reboot my perspective and reveal what I'd been missing moments before.
Alan Kay, the computer scientist at Xerox PARC, captured this perfectly:
"A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."
The best leaders I've known don't just have great answers. They ask great questions.
What questions are you asking to shift your team's perspective — and unlock the thinking, energy and solutions already within them?