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A review by robinbridgefour
QBQ! the Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life by John G. Miller
5.0
This is a must read I think for people in leadership roles but also for the people in any organization there are a lot of quick stories with the same take away. What can I do: to make this work better, to motivate my team, to add value to...etc. It is a mindset that I think everyone needs to try and get into if they are in a leadership role.
I recently left the company I had been working for the last twelve years and the awesome team I had cultivated there. Going into a new company and new culture was a little scary and I wasn't sure what to expect. In some ways the company culture is better and in some ways it was worse. There are always trade offs right, but starting with a new team I found there were a few people in it that played the blame game actively and while some statements made might be true they weren't productive to getting work done.
The Question Behind the Question (QBQ) is a great starter book to identify when you are asking an incorrect question as opposed to a productive question. For example some of the incorrect questions management asks are things like:
While those are questions they really fall into a victimhood stance of things happening to you. There is nothing proactive in those statements, nothing that you are doing to fix these issues. Some better questions would be:
I think this is a must have fast read for anyone in management. Some managers don't capitalize on the differences of their teams and instead trying to treat everyone the same and I have found that is a horrible way to operate. Instead it is better to identify what are the strengths and weaknesses of all the team members and help they play to their strengths while developing their weaknesses.
This is a short enough book that I assigned it to a few of the people on my team I'm trying to develop for future leaders but also used some of the examples in our weakly meetings to talk about and identify how to change mindsets and work together to do less finger pointing and more how can I help fix this issue. I'm fortunate in a lot of ways there are so many tools to already do that but there are always areas of improvement and times that victim thinking needs to be squashed and this book will help with some tools of how to change the script from victim questions into something that is proactive and productive.
I recently left the company I had been working for the last twelve years and the awesome team I had cultivated there. Going into a new company and new culture was a little scary and I wasn't sure what to expect. In some ways the company culture is better and in some ways it was worse. There are always trade offs right, but starting with a new team I found there were a few people in it that played the blame game actively and while some statements made might be true they weren't productive to getting work done.
The Question Behind the Question (QBQ) is a great starter book to identify when you are asking an incorrect question as opposed to a productive question. For example some of the incorrect questions management asks are things like:
"Why doesn't the younger generation want to work?"
"When will we find good people?"
"Why aren't they motivated?"
"Who made the mistake?"
"When will they get ingaged?"
While those are questions they really fall into a victimhood stance of things happening to you. There is nothing proactive in those statements, nothing that you are doing to fix these issues. Some better questions would be:
"How can I be a more effective coach?"
"What can I do to better understand each person I manage?"
"How can I build a stronger team?"
I think this is a must have fast read for anyone in management. Some managers don't capitalize on the differences of their teams and instead trying to treat everyone the same and I have found that is a horrible way to operate. Instead it is better to identify what are the strengths and weaknesses of all the team members and help they play to their strengths while developing their weaknesses.
This is a short enough book that I assigned it to a few of the people on my team I'm trying to develop for future leaders but also used some of the examples in our weakly meetings to talk about and identify how to change mindsets and work together to do less finger pointing and more how can I help fix this issue. I'm fortunate in a lot of ways there are so many tools to already do that but there are always areas of improvement and times that victim thinking needs to be squashed and this book will help with some tools of how to change the script from victim questions into something that is proactive and productive.