Answers and Questions

Some leaders are great because they know how to provide answers. A lot of the entrepreneurial millionaires I know of figured out a way to answer a problem that nobody else had been able to answer. One guy got frustrated waiting on a flight while the ground crew shuffled luggage around on the plane to get the weight and balance correct. By the time his flight landed, he had used the broken calculator in his bag to come up with a completely new solution that every airline uses today. Some leaders are great at providing answers like that.

There's a huge value to being a leader with answers, but I think there's an equally huge value to being a leader who simply knows how to ask the right questions. I hope there's value in that, because that's the way I am wired as a leader.

I can't usually come up with creative answers on my own, but I usually know the guy who can. I can't usually come up with a solution to a problem by myself, but I tend to be pretty good at looking at the solutions others have come up with to similar problems and synthesizing something that is workable.

Some leaders are great at coming up with answers. I want those guys on my team. But some of the best point-leaders I know don't have the answers at all - they just know how (and who) to ask the right questions.