Power – ElPropósito5 min de lectura

How do we unlock potential?

What is the greatest power we can bring to light to bring out the best in the people around us? What inner strength unlocks our potential as individuals and as teams? What is a leader’s most powerful tool? These questions and many others come to mind as I reflect on how we can draw out the best in ourselves. Our greatest power lies in questions. The better the questions, the better the odds of good answers. The best theories and explanations, and the best answers we have about our existence, came from powerful questions. Why do questions hold more power than explanations? Both matter, yet a question invites reflection. It is the gateway to reason, the tool every human being is born with. How can we ask more and better questions, and above all, why should we?

The first big step is noticing how many questions we ask each day. Do we explain more than we ask? Am I quicker to give explanations? Am I afraid of looking like I don’t know? That last question leads somewhere very interesting. Throughout my career I have watched the best leaders make a real effort to listen to the person in front of them, and very often their answer turns out to be a question. They give speeches only when needed, never for every scenario and every problem, and problems are where we spend all our time, looking for ways to solve challenges. In my previous post I said that perhaps the most significant challenge for leaders today is, and will remain, unlocking the potential of the people and teams who report to them. How can they do it? Their great tool is the question.

In a powerful conversation we have to know how to pull the thread. When someone is talking, a meaningful way to follow along is to ask questions. So how do we pull the thread? With questions that follow the conversation. What do we gain? Genuine interest and inspiration in the other person or group, a desire to keep expressing themselves, and with it, unlocked potential. By potential we mean that the answers to many challenges sit captive in others, and in ourselves, ready to come out at any moment. What happens when a conversation turns into a monologue, a long explanation? It dies, and the odds of finding new ways of seeing and doing things shrink.

In my previous post I concluded that a leader’s greatest challenge right now is unlocking the potential of their teams and direct reports. The challenges they face, though, demand a greater power to solve them. Their own knowledge and abilities are necessary, of course, and they fall short on their own. The greater power lives in the question, and in the kind of questions leaders ask to blend their wisdom with that of others. Is it easy to trade the speech for the question? The short answer is no. The long answer is that it can be learned. Another big step past this barrier is trusting that the more questions we ask, the more potential we unlock.

When we talk about power, we may think right away of the power of weapons, and the best weapon I have seen in a leader is the ability to ask questions. The more questions they ask, the more power they gain. Questions give us the ability to respond, and that ability gives us solutions to our greatest challenges. Will you dare to ask more questions this week?

A hug and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. I dedicate this post to my son Rodrigo on his eighth birthday, and to the joy of becoming a dad the day he was born. May questions always be your main source of knowledge, son, and may you keep unlocking your potential through them. I love you.

This week’s VELA:

• What I was watching: What Is a Woman? I have watched this documentary twice since it came out. I believe it should be widely shared, and I ask God to always help us discern what we can do to stay far from any horror, especially one that can be inflicted on a child
  – What I was listening to: El maldito nuevo orden mundial: la Democracia 2.0 (The cursed new world order: Democracy 2.0). An interview with my INCAE professor Julio Sergio Ramírez Arango about his new book, a deep analysis of what is happening in many countries in the Americas without naming any in particular. I am always impressed by the professor’s ability to explain complex things in simple words, especially given how complicated politics can get. This interview made clear to me where we come from, where we are and, above all, the path we MUST follow if we want to keep enjoying our full freedoms. Thank you, professor
  – What I was reading: Alignment, by professors Kaplan and Norton. A strategy and execution classic I keep going back to, to refresh concepts and compare them with much of what I see in today’s corporate world. The theory still holds and is more useful than ever
  – What I was learning: Fix your slow metabolism. From Dr. La Rosa’s channel. As always, a very interesting look at how we can improve our metabolism, and his explanation of fasting is very powerful

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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