Transform Your Leadership with These 5 Questions
What does it mean to ask good questions?
Alex Judd:That's a good question. I I would say it means to choose to see functionally for the purpose of this conversation, it means to choose to see life, leadership, and even relationship through the lens of opportunity, creativity, and curiosity. So the person that doesn't ask any questions is the person that believes the way that it is is the way that it always will be. The person that asks great questions is the person that believes things can be different, things can change, things can shift. And that in itself is a creative posture, that really highlights the value and power of questioning everything.
Ben Loy:Why is it an important skill for the people listening, for leaders?
Alex Judd:It's a principle that the the quality of your results never exceeds the quality of your questions. That sounds like a pithy phrase until you actually reckon with it and practice it, and then you start to realize, oh, this is really, really true to the point where I could tell you genuinely every good thing in my life right now that I played a role in intentionally creating, that I didn't just stumble into, but I played a role in intentionally creating upstream from that is always a question. I I actually believe that. And so the good things in our life that we get to participate in intentionally creating always come on the back end. Sometimes it's one day, sometimes it's one year, but they always come on the back end of really, really solid, formulated, thoughtful, creative, imaginative, profound questions.
Alex Judd:So,
Ben Loy:yeah, what is the purpose of this episode? What are we trying to communicate? Can you just elaborate on that a little bit?
Alex Judd:I want to go a little bit deeper than the shallow way that we often think about questions. Right? The shallow way that we often think about asking good questions is like, well, that's what you're supposed to do on your first date and and that's what you're supposed to do whenever you meet someone or whenever you're in Uber ride or something like that is you're just supposed to ask good questions. And and that is an arena for asking questions is just sheer curiosity and just getting to know someone or just creating conversation or something like that. That is one arena for asking questions.
Alex Judd:But for leaders, what I want us to remember is that questions are not just an area for getting information or for learning. Questions are also an incredible tool And that tool has different uses and different aims that are going to formulate the questions that we ask. And so in particular, the way I wanted us to frame this episode is let's talk about three arenas where questions can be a really helpful way to challenge ourselves and others. And then, what I wanted to do is just share five questions that have been life changing for me. And and that that sounds really cliche to say life changing, but, like, I'm saying it in the very, like, actual way of, like, these questions actually changed my life, like, legitimately.
Alex Judd:And so I wanna share those five questions with the people listening.
Ben Loy:What's the first arena that we can ask questions and and that you think questions are a valuable tool to use?
Alex Judd:Reflection. And anytime I hear the word reflection, I think of I don't know who originally said the quote, but it says that there's not wisdom in experience. There's wisdom in evaluated experience. And then let's pair that with the Tim Keller definition of wisdom, which is wisdom is competence with regard to the realities of life. So when we think about the fact that wisdom, competence with regard to the realities of life, comes when we evaluate our experience.
Alex Judd:When we say, hey, that happened. How did that go? Well, then what we immediately recognize is how do we evaluate our experience? We ask questions. And one of the things that I often see is that if I'm not careful, if I'm moving too fast, if I'm not being reflective, the mistakes that I make don't turn into lessons.
Alex Judd:The successes that I have don't turn into additional successes, and the good things in my life don't get reproduced in the life of others. And it wasn't because they couldn't, it's because they didn't. And the reason why they didn't is because I didn't take the time to reflect. And what I'm really saying there is I didn't take the time to ask the proper questions on the back end of what I experienced, and therefore, I didn't get all the wisdom that was hidden within what I did. And so that just hits on the value and power of questions as being a tool for reflection.
Ben Loy:Mhmm. You've mentioned this multiple times before, but there's three types of mistakes, and there's it's good mistakes are ones that others make that you can learn from. Bad mistakes are ones that you make that you can learn from. Tragic mistakes are ones that you make that you don't learn from. And the difference between a bad mistake and a tragic mistake really is just questions.
Ben Loy:Like, did you ask questions?
Alex Judd:That's exactly right. I mean, so often when I do something horribly wrong, right, when I when I do something that that just, like, completely went off the rails, the first question I ask myself then in reflection is, what was I thinking? Right? And and how many of us can relate to that? Right?
Alex Judd:I see people raising their hands on their run right now saying that's me. I asked them myself the question, what was I thinking? And my answer to that evaluative reflection question is I wasn't. Right? So because I didn't practice proper reflection earlier, I'm the the reflection that I'm now practicing is what was I thinking?
Alex Judd:And what we can do there is we can say, well, there are certain times where thinking is a good thing to do that I should create a rhythm for thinking. Right? And and what's going to occur in that thinking? It's going to be great questions. Right?
Alex Judd:Our questions guide our thinking and our thinking guides our life. Mhmm. So this is why practically when when we hear and see so much content right now on the value and power of journaling, what are people doing whenever they're journaling? They're answering questions whether they know it or not, and it might not be overtly written questions, but people when they are journaling are always answering questions. And if people ever tell you my journaling or prayer life is dull or I don't even know where to start or or I'm I'm hitting a wall, what they're really saying is I can't answer because I don't have the right questions.
Alex Judd:The minute you get a good question, the minute you start to have the right answers.
Ben Loy:What's the next arena that you can ask questions in?
Alex Judd:Leadership development. So the first one was reflection. It's looking back on our own experience or, you know, our team's experience and saying how'd that go? The the second is leadership development. And this is actually something that we teach every single coach that we train to coach business leaders for us at Path for Growth.
Alex Judd:It's one of the five coaching qualities that is curiosity. And the principle that we orient our entire curiosity training around is good leaders give answers to people. Great leaders extract answers from people. Here's what we often think. We think that when people are coming to us with a problem that they're facing, a a challenge that they're encountering, a decision that needs to be made, the thing that we think is most people, most of the time when they do that, they're coming to us for answers.
Alex Judd:In reality, what most people are actually coming to you for is confidence. Mhmm. They're not coming to you for answers. But think about that distinction for a second. If someone is coming to you and and the language that they have is, hey, I'm facing this challenge or I'm facing this issue or I need to make this decision.
Alex Judd:Can you help me? And you give them an answer. They need confidence, but you give them an answer. What do you do? You actually cut them off at the knees for the very thing that they need because you teach them, you can't do that.
Alex Judd:I've got this. I'm the superhero in this relationship. What do great leaders do? They they help people recognize that either the answers are already in you or they're wildly accessible to you. Mhmm.
Alex Judd:And I'm nothing special. There's no reason why I have a monopoly on answers and good decision making. You can do this. And how do we convey that message to people? We use questions to pull the answers out of them.
Ben Loy:I think this is personally one of the most impactful things for me since, like, coming on with Path for Growth. Or maybe maybe a little bit prior, but I I I don't remember exactly when I first heard this principle of, yeah, good leaders don't give answers, they extract. But it's so easy to take that and just immediately apply that to your your interactions. And people talk a lot about, especially from a from a mid level perspective, what it means to, like, lead up. And this is a great opportunity for someone who'd be in that situation of, like, I have someone over me who comes to me with questions or comes to me with, seeking answers.
Ben Loy:And often, like, best thing you can do in those situations is not tell them what to do because sometimes that can throw off the dynamic. But if you just ask really, really good questions, you can often guide them to where they need to be because they find the answers within themselves.
Alex Judd:That's right. And and the simplest form of this, which I don't wanna degrade certainly because I do this a lot and I think it can be incredibly valuable, but it can also be overused, is what do you think we should do? Right? That's a simple form of it. But what can also be helpful is when people say, hey, I need to make this decision about what to do with this customer.
Alex Judd:I I have to make a tough decision as it relates to my communication with this customer and what our relationship looks like going forward. What do I do in this situation? As a leader, you could say, well, what do you think you should do? Or you could say, well, tell me this. What does winning look like sixty days from now as it relates to this relationship?
Alex Judd:And maybe they start giving you some answers. Well, I think this would be true and this would be true and this would be true. And maybe you as a leader can draw those things down on the whiteboard. And then you could say, okay, so this is what winning looks like. Do you feel like we covered it?
Alex Judd:And and they say, yeah, I I think that's it. And then you could ask them, okay, well, what could you do right now that would move you one step towards the direction of what you defined winning looks like? Instead of just because sometimes they're saying, don't have a decision making process. And what you can do is instead of saying, oh, well, I'll just make the decision for you. You teach them how to fish.
Alex Judd:You say, okay, well, let's walk through a decision making process together, and then great leaders will follow-up on the back end of that process. And they'll saying, hey, you realize there's nothing super special we did in this conversation. I I love having these conversations with you, but everything we just did at this whiteboard, you could absolutely do by yourself. And the reason why I know that is because you did it. I didn't have a single original thought this entire time.
Ben Loy:Mhmm.
Alex Judd:The other thing I would say as it relates to questions being a tool for leadership development is if you're going to do that, you have to believe that people are smart. You have to believe that they're smart, that they're capable. What we're not trying to do is, like, I'm I'm going to like share these guided questions that like gets them to stumble into the answer that I already have in my head. I think it's way better for you to actually say, I actually think you're really capable and you're really smart and I actually think you might be better at making this decision than I am. And so I wanna hear your thoughts on this.
Ben Loy:Mhmm. Let's move on to the third arena.
Alex Judd:Yeah. We already hit on it a little bit, but decision making. So so what I wrote down here was a Peter Drucker quote. He said that the most serious mistakes are not made as a result of wrong answers, but because of asking the wrong questions. And I think that quote is directly related to the way we make decisions.
Alex Judd:Craig Groeschel says that the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your decisions. If you are a leader, then you are a decision maker. And how do we make really, really great decisions? Not by having all the answers. The way that we make great decisions is by asking great questions.
Alex Judd:And again, we get shallow on this because we get into a leadership team meeting and, you know, we've got a decision to make about the health care plan for our company, which could be, you know, well, a couple $100,000 decision, if not a multimillion dollar decision depending on the size of the company. And what we often do is we get all these brilliant minds in the room. We say healthcare is on the docket today for our IDS. We're going to talk about the healthcare plan. What should we do?
Alex Judd:And that's the question we ask. And we think we're being a good leader because we're asking a question. What should we do is the the shallow question, and it's the last question. The questions we should be asking is, what do our people really value? Mhmm.
Alex Judd:What do other companies in our industry do? Right? What are the downsides of each of these plans? What are the upsides of the each of these plans? What information do we not have that if we did have it and we could have it would help us make a better decision?
Alex Judd:Who should we be talking to to make sure we move forward in a way that's really effective? Right? Like those are all questions that we should be asking to make sure that the decision on the back end of our final conversation of what we should do is actually really quality. I think some of the greatest questions you can ask in in decision making is information gathering questions. People often make bad decisions because they have inadequate or bad information.
Ben Loy:Mhmm.
Alex Judd:And you always have bad information or inadequate information because you didn't even think to ask the question. So so what are all the questions you can ask just to basically shine light on everything that you can possibly know?
Ben Loy:Before we dive into these five questions, you mentioned this at the very beginning, but asking good questions both being rooted in and expanding people's capacity for creativity and, like, discovery. Let's break that down just a little bit more.
Alex Judd:Yeah. The number of wildly successful businesses that were started in a garage or a basement is crazy. Right? Bet you didn't think I was going there. Right?
Alex Judd:But, like, Disney, Apple, Microsoft, Spotify, even Life Church, like, all of these have their origin story in a garage or in a basement. And some people take that as being like, I am gonna start in my basement because that's clearly the operating strategy. What's actually happening there? Well, what's happening there is when you start in a garage or a basement, what do you have to have if you're ever going to be successful and if you're ever going to get this thing off the ground? You have to not have resources.
Alex Judd:You clearly don't have resources. You've got to have resourcefulness. You've got to be wildly and incredibly resourceful. And because they can get the thing off the ground in a garage, they can do basically anything. The principle there that applies to questions is constraints are the breeding ground for creativity.
Alex Judd:Just like the garage is a breeding ground for creativity because you're like, I don't have hardly anything right now. I've got to figure out how to do what I can with what I have. When you put a box around things, people become wildly creative. They find answers where they otherwise wouldn't. Here's how that applies to questions.
Alex Judd:Think about everything you could possibly think about right now. It's infinite. You can't actually even think about everything that you could possibly think about right now. But then the minute I ask you a question like, tell me about a time when you were so excited that you couldn't help but take action. The minute I ask you that, what am I doing?
Alex Judd:I'm putting a box around all of the thoughts that you possibly could think, and that box is the equivalent of a garage. And I'm telling you, this is the box that you now get to operate in. You are literally your brain. I picture the people from inside out scanning through all of your memories. They are running like crazy right now trying to find the core memories that align with that question.
Alex Judd:What's crazy is you will come up with such a compelling answer. Questions are constraints and constraints are the breeding ground for creativity. And so that's that's the philosophical why behind what we're about to share with people, which is five questions. If you take the time to ask yourself these questions or ask others these questions, you will get more creative and therefore better answers about your life and your leadership.
Ben Loy:All of these questions have their own category attached to them. So state the category and then state the question.
Alex Judd:Yeah. I like that you highlighted that. You know, some of these actually probably have multiple categories for them, but we'll share maybe the primary category. And and these are not questions that I'm theorizing as like, I think if you ask this, it could be really helpful. These are all questions that have truly changed my life.
Alex Judd:Right? Like, these five questions have changed the way that I live actively today, and they're ones that I still lean on and use. And so the first category of question that I want to share with people is is vision. Right? And the question associated with vision that I want us to remember and lean into is what does winning look like?
Alex Judd:Something that is a tendency for a lot of people and a lot of leaders is that we become way more familiar with what we're against than what we're for. And the constraints that we operate in are what's the worst that could happen, what's currently going wrong, or what could go wrong. The minute we shift that mental dialogue to what does winning look like, well, then we are creating a constraint. And within that constraint, it's crazy. We'll start to pop off creative ideas of, well, here's what success would actually be, and that thought process can have massive ramifications.
Ben Loy:I I like that because it also it pivots the conversation into, like, what is the outcome? What is the desired outcome? Like, it becomes an outcome oriented discussion instead of task oriented or or one even yeah. Maybe just based off of fear of becoming something you don't want to be.
Alex Judd:I love that you hit home on that because what that hits home on is it's a higher order question. What's a what's a bad question as it relates to a strategic planning discussion or a leadership growth discussion or even a personal growth discussion? It's what do we need to do? And that's what's that's the question that so many people either either say or or it's unwritten, but that's what they formulate their meeting around is. Okay, everyone, what do we need to do?
Alex Judd:And we've got $500,000 of payroll in the room right now. And the question that we're asking is what do we need to do? And we're basically making a list of firefighting activities. Conversely, the minute you ask what does winning look like, you're not just saying like what does our random task list suggest that we need to do and talk about today? Rather, you're saying what is the outcome that if we were to achieve it, we would actually be satisfied, excited, of maximal service to other people?
Alex Judd:And then you work back from that, and then you ask, okay, in light of what winning looks like, what do we need to do?
Ben Loy:Mhmm. Yeah. The first thing that came a, that that question popped into my head immediately, and then the first thing that came to mind when you asked that question is, like, that's it's just reactive. That's a reactive question. You're you're responding to the world around you, and you're not actually leading.
Ben Loy:You're just reacting.
Alex Judd:And and, you know, this can apply to your marriage. It can apply to your vacations. Aspen and I, when we go on vacation, we will sit on the on the plane and we we will say, what does winning look like when we're on the plane ride back? And it informs everything about the way we treat our vacation. Right?
Alex Judd:It can also be really helpful in your head if you're in an argument with someone. You can either you can actually either actually bring this up or or you can do this mentally in your head is like, what's the win here? Like, what are we actually trying to accomplish here? And man, if you can align on that, then you are way, way, way further down the line in terms of your disagreement than you would be if you just get embroiled or embattled in the tactics of the argument that you're in right now.
Ben Loy:Mhmm. What's the next one?
Alex Judd:So so the next category is prioritizing. So we talked about vision. Now we're we're talking about prioritizing. This question is not original to me, and and one thing that I would highlight there is, why do we get this idea that we we need to come up with all of our own original questions? Some of my favorite questions that I ask, I have ripped from other people.
Alex Judd:And and this one, I I ripped from Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, and credit to them, they wrote an entire book on this question, and the book is called the one thing. It could have been called the one question because this is the question. What's the one thing that if I were to do it, it would make everything else easier or unnecessary? And what they would say is the answer to that question is the thing that you should give disproportionate time and energy to. Always.
Alex Judd:And Gary Keller I mean, if you don't know much about Gary Keller, he is the wildly successful CEO of Keller Williams Realty. Like, incredibly successful. What I love about Gary is how thoughtful he is, and it's no wonder he literally asks this question every day. What's the one thing that if I were to do it today, it would make everything else either easier or unnecessary? What's crazy is so often we don't know what to prioritize.
Alex Judd:Like, I have so much to do. I don't know what to do. And we end up doing a little bit of everything or a whole lot of nothing. One of those two options. What's crazy is if you actually have the humility to ask this question, you will find an answer, and it's typically pretty clear what the answer is.
Alex Judd:And then if you do that thing, I mean, you just create unstoppable momentum for everything else that's on that list.
Ben Loy:Mhmm. What's an example of what this could look like? Because I feel like it it'd be possible to hear that question and then, in some context, maybe even be so overwhelmed, like, I don't even know how to answer that. Yeah. Like, can you give an example of of what maybe that looked like for you?
Alex Judd:I can give you this morning's example. Perfect. Right? So so, after I finish my writing this morning, it's like I like to label like what are my big three things that I want to accomplish today outside of the already scheduled meetings and activities for the day. Right?
Alex Judd:And the prideful version of me says, Alex, you can do more than three. And it's like, maybe I can. And if I can, then I'll get brownie points for those things. But for the purposes of the morning, I'm going to establish my big three. And so I spent some time asking the question like, well, what's the one thing that if I were to do it, it would make everything else in the coming day and in the coming week easier or unnecessary?
Alex Judd:And it's like super clear. We are in hiring mode right now, and we're also in a little bit of an organizational restructure right now. And it's super clear to me that like as it relates to decisions surrounding that organizational restructure, our leadership team is going to be involved in making those decisions. And the bottleneck around our leadership team having that conversation is me having some form of a proposal on here's how here's the structure that I'm proposing that we can chop up, argue about, discuss all of that. Right?
Alex Judd:And so it's like, I need to spend some time getting that on paper. And if I do that, well, number one, we we hire those people faster, which accelerates other people not being overloaded on our team or having extra work. It also brings clarity to my mind in terms of what's going to happen where. And there's so many things that that are held up because of me that are now moving again. Right?
Alex Judd:And so it's, like, super clear that that's the answer to that question. So that's what I'm gonna spend time on later today is that exact question. That's an example of what that looks like.
Ben Loy:Let's move on to the next one.
Alex Judd:Yeah. So so first question was question related vision. Second question was related to prioritizing. The third question is related to crisis or abundance. And I at first, I wrote this down.
Alex Judd:I was like, the right time to ask this question is in crisis. But also this question that I'm gonna give you, man, if you can become disciplined about asking this question in abundance, holy cow, you are going to crush it. And so here's the question. It's super simple. What does this make possible?
Alex Judd:Let's start with crisis. Crisis will either crush you or it will recreate you. And I believe that's woven into the biblical narrative through the powerful word of redemption. Right? That the worst thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe did, and it was redeemed to be the greatest thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe.
Alex Judd:That is the narrative template that our world operates in. I believe that. And as a result, every crisis that I experience, there's no way it's gonna be as bad as that thing. And every crisis has the seeds of redemption in it. There's glory.
Alex Judd:There's goodness. That's there's grace in it, and everything works together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purposes. Right? If you actually believe that, then, you know, when you're facing trial, when you're facing tribulation, when you're facing challenge, what you can say is God has something in this. And if I can get in on what God is doing, I can be participatory in seeing this redeemed for his glory and for others' good.
Alex Judd:And so the way I capture all of that theology into a question is when you face crisis, you gotta be disciplined because you won't feel this oftentimes. You gotta be disciplined about asking the question, what does this actually make possible?
Ben Loy:Because what do people typically ask in crisis? Why? Why is this happening to me? Or what are we
Alex Judd:gonna do? Yeah. Yeah. And That's so true. And why is almost a whining statement.
Ben Loy:Exactly.
Alex Judd:Yep. That's that's Job. That's that's kind of like what Job's bad friends were asking were telling him to start asking is why.
Ben Loy:Yep. Whereas, like, this, again, like, it pivots your posture into everything I am given is either, yeah, a gift or or there's suffering as well. But, like, all of those things, based on what God says in His word, will be redeemed. And God wastes nothing. And so that it shifts your perspective into a yeah.
Ben Loy:Like, how is God working in this? Where are the areas that he has the opportunity to redeem this? And maybe if you can't even see it, like again, in in some way, it does put constraints around like, suffering puts constraints around your life in a way that it's like, oh, yeah. I I have to create. I have to innovate.
Ben Loy:I have to to to move in a way that I haven't been previously.
Alex Judd:And so That's so good.
Ben Loy:I I just love the posture shift that that question takes in contrast to, I think, what people typically ask.
Alex Judd:Mhmm. And, you know, let's be very clear. I I have been to my fair share of self improvement leadership and business growth conferences that may or may not align with what is now my theology. Right? It can be really easy to subscribe to a shallow version of what we're talking about here that is like everything bad that happens is gonna result in you being financially wealthy eventually.
Alex Judd:And it's like that that is a a false gospel. That is not true. Right? Sometimes you you may not materially or physically see the affliction or struggle you are going through redeemed. But if your aim is the glory of God, then maybe that is the redemption.
Alex Judd:Right? So so you will, you know, at the end of all things, see it redeemed, but maybe you might not be healed from the affliction. Your relationship with that team member that left might stay really, really bad. But maybe the testimony that's meant to come out of that that that becomes redemption is people see when that person goes through tough, difficult, unexplainable, sometimes tragic things. They don't just have them go away to be able to be joyful or to be able to be faithful.
Alex Judd:Rather, they are able to be faithful in and through that, And that is redemption. That is a good result. Sometimes we see it materially redeemed.
Ben Loy:Mhmm.
Alex Judd:But other times, it's like it's just, man, the way that you respond to tragedy with such grace is in itself the testimony and therefore the redemption. Mhmm. And then we probably don't have time to get into all of this, but people can probably pretty naturally see how that applies to abundance as well. So often when we are in seasons of abundance, basically we stop asking questions altogether and we say, okay, I did all this so now I can coast. And now we've put a lid and that's the exact opposite type of constraint that you want to put on your growth and your ability to serve others.
Alex Judd:It's great to ask a good question. What does this now make possible? And we could record an entire episode on that, but it would probably be better to get to the fourth question.
Ben Loy:Yeah. So the fourth category is decision making and development. The question you put is, what would a wise leader do?
Alex Judd:Yeah. It's so funny. Whenever I am struggling with a really, really difficult decision, maybe sometimes it's about, like, communication to a team member or a customer, especially when it's an emotionally charged situation. Right? I I had someone, and this was a couple years ago now, send me an email, which email probably isn't the best way to do this, but send me an email with most of our teams cc'd with a list of ways that I had apparently ethically wronged him.
Ben Loy:This was a team member?
Alex Judd:This was not a team member. Okay. I haven't told you this story, so interesting format to share this for the first time. This was this was a customer, right? And he was very emotionally charged.
Alex Judd:Right? I would prefer a person like that give me a phone call so we can talk about that. But he was very emotionally charged and and immediately I'm reading this email. What do I do? I start to get emotionally charged.
Alex Judd:One of the things that was really helpful is before I type anything on Hill's keyboard, I sit back, take a deep breath, and say, in this situation, what would a wise leader do? That is a constraint that in the presence of that constraint, I'm now forced to consider the fact that whatever playbook a wise leader might do, I'm about to not do. Right? Like, so I better be really careful here right now. And then think about what would a wise leader do and, like, well, a wise leader would seriously examine their own motives and look, you know, is there merit and truth to anything he's saying?
Alex Judd:Or rather, what merit or truth is there to what he's saying? Because I I know I'm not perfect. I I there's things that I've done wrong every single day. Right? And so maybe there's some maybe in all of his 20 points that he listed, maybe there's five points of truth in there that I need to own and I should do that.
Alex Judd:And then on the back end of that, what would a wise leader do? Well, a wise leader would not respond to an inappropriate medium in an inappropriate medium. Right? I'm not going to say like, I can't believe this person sent this via email. I'm going to send an email back that's equally obtrusive with more people cc'd.
Alex Judd:Right? No. I'm gonna make a phone call. What would a wise leader do? A wise leader would write down the things that they believe are true beforehand so that they have that written piece of paper to reference in the conversation, and they're not speaking out of emotion.
Alex Judd:They're speaking out of rationale and logic. Right? All of that series of questions came from one question, and it was what would a wise leader do? And so really helpful for personal decision making and personal action. Also helpful for developing others.
Alex Judd:We talked about questions as a leadership development tool. It's a great question to ask is, like, if someone comes to you with a decision that they need to make or a problem that they need to solve or a customer issue or an issue that they're having with another team member on the team, you can ask them what would a wisely you're kind of telling them you're not being very wise right now. Right? But but you could ask them, hey. Just just put yourself in the position.
Alex Judd:What what would a wise leader do in this situation? And what's crazy is if you ask that question, people will give you answers. And then you can say, well, maybe you should do that.
Ben Loy:Let's move on to the last one which is in self reflection. Yeah. What's that question and then can you break it down?
Alex Judd:Yeah. This is one that I recognised as a really powerful self reflection question in the past year is I don't I don't honestly even remember how I stumbled across this, but, basically, I found a ton of value in asking, what would the average person who is in my life stage be struggling with right now? And what's crazy is I can answer that question pretty easily. Like, I'm a new father. I'm a fairly new husband.
Alex Judd:I'm a business owner. I'm in my mid thirties. What is that person gonna struggle with? That guy is certainly that average guy is going to struggle with prioritizing his marriage. He's going to struggle with not just getting quality time with his kiddo, but quantity time with his kiddo.
Alex Judd:He he's gonna struggle to be fully present at work whenever he's supposed to be working. He's probably really gonna struggle with, like, temporal distractions, like social media. A lot of guys in their mid thirties, once they have a kid and a wife, really struggle with their weight, and they struggle to maintain physical activity. A lot of guys that age start to become socially isolated from other men. Right?
Alex Judd:I've got a whole list of things that average men at my lifestyle struggle with. So then the follow-up question, where am I most susceptible to being remarkably average? I have to recognize that there is really nothing outside of prayerful, faithful, intentional decision making that makes me anything more than average. Right? And so, like, left to my own abilities and devices, I am so average, and I believe that.
Alex Judd:Right? And so it's like, if I'm not gonna be those things, it's gonna be because I made decisions that were based in in character of who God is and then who I wanna be that resulted in habits, rhythms, and actions that then informed the person I was going to be. Doesn't just apply to me, though. You can look at someone in, you know, age 63. You know, what would someone that is age 63, their kids are out of the house, their business has grown to where it doesn't fully need them anymore.
Alex Judd:What would that person struggle with? Complacency, laziness, lack of vision, micromanaging just to create work because they don't feel needed anymore. Right? Social disconnection, lack of vision for the future of their life. Right?
Alex Judd:That's six things that that person would struggle with. And then you just get to ask yourself the question, like, left to my own devices, I will be remarkably average. So what does 63 year old me want to do? It's so helpful.
Ben Loy:Yeah. I love that.
Alex Judd:Yeah. I don't love it. It's like dead dumb it. Like, where am I being average right now? But it's like, I want to be different than average, so it's helpful just to think about, well, what is average?
Ben Loy:Yeah.
Alex Judd:And it's all we often think about like our challenges and our struggles are so specific and unique and it's like, nah. Like all 30 year old guys struggle with the most of the same things.
Ben Loy:Yeah.
Alex Judd:And it it's actually really helpful to depersonalize it a little bit.
Ben Loy:Well, think that's often the biggest lie leaders tell themselves is that, like, they're alone. They are it's on them. Right? Yes. And then they self isolate and they hunker down.
Ben Loy:It's like, more than likely, everyone around you is and your peers are probably going through very similar things or or have recently and, like, there's a lot of strength in asking for help and and just even just acknowledging, like, putting the mirror up, right, and just acknowledging, like, yeah, these are the areas in this current season that, yeah, that I may I may be failing or that I need to just be putting constraints or borders or accountability around so that I can just be operating wisely. Exactly. What what what's a a challenge that you have for people, as we close this episode out?
Alex Judd:I I'd say choose one of the questions, one of the five, maybe go back to it in in the episode, And and how about let's plan to also list the five questions in the show notes? Mhmm. Choose one of the five and ask it to yourself or someone else, and just spend some time giving genuine thought to the answer. Alfred North Whitehead, he famously said, the purpose of thinking is so that our thoughts die instead of us. And it's crazy.
Alex Judd:You have this mind that can generate ideas and possible futures and potential realities, Then you can actually think about like, that good or is that bad? And if it's a bad thing, don't do it. If it's a good thing, you do more of it. Right? We oftentimes just don't think and thinking always starts with great questions.
Alex Judd:Just start asking. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Ben. Hey, all. Thanks so much for watching.
Alex Judd:If you want more content like this, we've got some killer stuff planned. Make sure you rate, review, and subscribe. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
