Powerful Inquiry
Leading With Questions to Build Leadership Capacity in Your School and District
DONNA J. MICHEAUX JENNIFER L. PARVIN
Copyright © 2025 by Solution Tree Press
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Names: Micheaux, Donna J., author. | Parvin, Jennifer L., author.
Title: Powerful inquiry : leading with questions to build leadership capacity in your school and district / Donna J. Micheaux, Jennifer L. Parvin.
Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024013700 (print) | LCCN 2024013701 (ebook) | ISBN 9781954631519 (paperback) | ISBN 9781954631526 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Teacher-principal relationships--United States. | Teacher-administrator relationships--United States. | School management and organization--United States. | Educational leadership--United States.
Classification: LCC LB2832.2 .M54 2024 (print) | LCC LB2832.2 (ebook) | DDC 371.1/06--dc23/eng/20240516
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Acknowledgments
To all the courageous and inquisitive leaders we have had the opportunity to lead, be led by, and coach, who work tirelessly to provide an equitable and excellent education for all children.
—Donna J. Micheaux and Jennifer L. Parvin
Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:
Jill Anderson
Principal Lakewood Elementary School Norwalk, Iowa
Mark Benson
Principal
Harriet G. Eddy Middle School Elk Grove, California
Jeff Byrnes
Principal Mountain Meadow Elementary Buckley Washington
Laura Hesson
Washington County School District Board Member
Washington County School District
St. George, Utah
Benjamin Luis
Principal
Liberty Middle School Lemoore, California
Peter Marshall
Education Consultant Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Paula Mathews
STEM Instructional Coach Dripping Springs Independent School District Dripping Springs, Texas
Lindsey Matkin
Principal Kinard Middle School Fort Collins, Colorado
Nancy Petolick Instructional Coach/ Interventionist
Savannah Elementary, Denton Independent School District Aubrey, Texas
Rosalind Poon
Vice Principal Hugh Boyd Secondary School Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
Jennifer Renegar Data & Assessment Specialist Republic School District Republic, Missouri
Ringnolda Jofee’ Tremain Director of Professional Learning Texas Leadership Public Schools Arlington, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal Rogers Heritage High School Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership to download the free reproducibles in this book.
About the Authors
Donna J. Micheaux, PhD, PC, ACC , of Micheaux Educational Consulting, provides executive coaching, leadership development, and consultation to campus, district, and system leaders. As an educational leader with more than twenty-five years of experience, Dr. Micheaux has led districtwide strategic planning and designed and implemented innovative staffing, evaluation, and other leadership programs that have resulted in districtwide improvements in teacher and leader practice and student learning. In addition, Dr. Micheaux consults with nonprofit organizations and local and national foundations to develop and support innovative STEM efforts at K–12 schools.
Dr. Micheaux conducts executive coaching through contracted work with The Holdsworth Center and is a senior consultant for Learning Forward. She served as the deputy superintendent for the Pittsburgh Public Schools and chief of schools officer for the Dallas Independent School District. Throughout her career, Dr. Micheaux has held various K–12 positions as a teacher, school and district administrator, adjunct professor, and research associate.
Dr. Micheaux has national experience developing and leading professional development efforts for school districts across the United States as lead district liaison for the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh and the national director of professional development for New Leaders.
Dr. Micheaux presents at national conferences and has published articles on leadership, including “Principal Evaluation as a Tool for Growth,” which she coauthored with Dr. Jennifer Parvin, and “Striking the Right Balance: How Do School Leaders Balance District Priorities With School and Staff Needs.”
Dr. Micheaux holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in special education, and a doctorate in educational administration and policy studies from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed the Professional Coach Program (PC) at Duquesne University and has been awarded the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation.
Jennifer L. Parvin, PhD, PCC , is a proven educational leader with more than twenty-five years of educational experience. Dr. Parvin holds the Professional Coach Certification (PCC) from the International Coaching Federation, of which she is a member. She serves as an executive coach to campus, district, and organizational leaders through her contracted work with the Holdsworth Center, the Leadership Lab at the University of North Texas Dallas, the New Mexico Public Education Department, and others. Additionally, Dr. Parvin consults with and provides professional development for school districts, nonprofits, and municipalities on leadership development, effective coaching models, and developing aligned, collaborative, and inclusive teams.
Dr. Parvin is an adjunct faculty member in the Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Studies Department, Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University (SMU) and teaches multiple in-demand courses on coaching and organizational dynamics.
Dr. Parvin was the founding director of the Dallas Independent School District Leadership Academy, which provided professional learning for the district’s aspiring and sitting principals. Prior to that, Dr. Parvin was the founding principal of Salazar Elementary, which was named a National Model Professional Learning Community by Richard and Rebecca DuFour. Dr. Parvin began her career in education teaching English as a second language.
Dr. Parvin has presented, along with her coauthor Dr. Donna Micheaux, at Learning Forward’s annual conference numerous times. They published an article—“Principal Evaluation as a Tool for Growth”—in Learning Forward’s magazine, The Learning Professional , in 2018.
Dr. Parvin holds a bachelor’s degree in English from West Texas A&M, a master of arts in English/humanities from the University of Dallas, and a
master of science and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Texas at Arlington.
To book Donna Micheaux or Jennifer Parvin for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.
Introduction
Statements are passive. Questions are interactive.
—DANIEL PINK
Why write a book about leading with questions? What would be the individual and organizational impact of leaders shifting from directing and telling to inquiring and exploring? What happens when we lead with questions?
Leading with questions strengthens leaders’ ability to meet today’s educational challenges by cultivating a new way of leading. The COVID-19 pandemic brought many of education’s historical challenges to the surface while adding new challenges including student learning loss, significant socialemotional issues for students and staff, inequitable access to technology, and staff who were ill-equipped to provide remote teaching and learning, to name a few. These intense adaptive challenges require a fundamental rethinking and reinventing of education, which requires the collective wisdom, creativity, resilience, and commitment of educational leaders. Leaders must think differently and in more complex ways than has been required in the past. They must engage in continuous learning, be able to see through and from multiple perspectives, and possess the will and skill to develop that capacity in others. Though this time is rife with anxiety, it is also rife with possibility.
How does this relate to powerful inquiry and leading with questions, the topics of our book? We believe that the mindset and skill set of leaders who successfully and effectively navigate this inflection point and trajectory do so by engaging in powerful inquiry and leading with questions. Leaders who tell and direct maintain the veneer of certainty and predictability while, by contrast, those who ask questions and listen deeply to many voices gain clarity and spur innovation.
The capacity for inquiry is what education needs to meet the challenges of this moment and those to come. Underlying the capacity for meeting this moment is the ability to cultivate and sustain a coaching culture. Such a coaching culture centers the development of people by adopting a stance of genuine curiosity and inquiry, by asking questions designed to generate thinking through active and committed listening, and by giving and receiving feedback. These actions and behaviors keep the commitment to growth in the foreground.
As Daniel Pink (2023) reminds us, statements are passive while questions are an invitation to interact and engage with others. He notes that when you ask a question, people answer. Questions create space and opportunity for diverse voices and perspectives, for collaboration and innovation, and for continuous learning, especially adaptive learning. While taking a coaching stance—asking powerful questions and deeply listening—sounds simple, it is not always easy.
Despite the power of creating a questioning culture in which the responsibility for innovation, finding problems, and solving problems is shared with others, there are reasons leaders don’t ask questions. One reason is a mental model of leadership that suggests that leaders provide answers, not ask questions. A second reason is that powerful inquiry requires a skill set that is not typically part of a leader’s preparation and training for the job. Third, leading with questions takes more time than simply telling or directing. Finally, a culture may be in place that discourages questions, especially those that challenge prevailing assumptions. Regardless of the challenges, we propose leaders use a coaching stance and lead with questions to build leadership capacity.
While mastering the essential coaching skills of asking powerful questions and practicing committed and active listening is key to leading with questions, there are deeper capacities. In the ten chapters that make up this book, we identify key leadership capacities and provide questions, inquiry-based tools, and strategies that individual, team, and system leaders can use to lead with questions to build skills in those areas. And, though we begin our exploration of leading with questions by focusing on the individual leader in part I, we keenly understand—and subsequently explore in parts II and III—the essential ways that the leading-with-questions approach thrives and substantially shapes the culture of teams and the organization.
Though we know better, we still carry, both consciously and subconsciously, as our default mental model of leadership, the solitary leader who acts alone. While there are moments when leaders should direct and tell, there are more moments when engaging in powerful inquiry and asking questions rather
than making statements and advocating positions is more effective. By taking a coaching stance leaders create a culture of inquiry, learning, empowerment, and cohesion that will be more helpful in resolving the challenges they face.
We hope this book will inspire some leaders to begin the journey to lead with questions, affirm those leaders who are already on the journey, and help all leaders—individual, team, and system—reflect upon the question, Why is leading with questions more important now than ever?
Let’s begin by exploring what makes questions so powerful.
Why Lead With Questions
According to innovator and strategist Neil Cooper (2018), when we are asked a question, our brains release serotonin, a chemical that motivates a person to act—to think about or do something. Reflect for a moment on the most powerful question you have been asked as a leader. Did you have an emotional reaction? Did the question momentarily take over your thought process? Did you direct your brain to stop everything and focus on this question, or did your brain do this automatically? This is what happens when leaders ask questions of themselves and others: hearing a question affects our brains in the moment. Questions can also shape future behavior. Behavioral scientists refer to the “mere measurement effect” as a phenomenon where simply asking questions about people’s intentions can change their behavior (Morwitz, Johnson, & Schmittlein, 1993).
The work of leading in our everchanging world that has no ready answers is complex and dynamic. Leaders who embrace the power of questions shift from the traditional command-and-control approach of leading to asking and listening, creating the kind of leading and learning culture needed to adapt, innovate, and discover solutions together.
Many leaders acknowledge the need to enhance their skill set and shift their mindset to build their capacity for this new way of leading. In this book, we show how leaders at all levels in the organization can lead with questions to reflect on and grow their own practice and build the leadership capacity of others.
In this book, we address how leading with questions fosters the following: A growth mindset
More emotionally intelligent leaders who can think in innovative and complex ways
Psychological safety
Leaders who embrace the power of questions shift from the traditional command-andcontrol approach of leading to asking and listening, creating the kind of leading and learning culture needed to adapt, innovate, and discover solutions together.
The ability to lead change and manage immunity to change
More effective, collaborative, and high-functioning teams
Smarter organizations that learn
More diverse, inclusive, and equitable schools and systems
Who This Book Is For
This book is for school and district leaders, including principals, principal supervisors, superintendents, and other school and central office leaders who are responsible for building leadership capacity and creating a school- or districtwide culture conducive to learning.
This book focuses on leading with questions to build core leadership skills and competencies. School and district leaders will learn to lead with questions to deepen their own capacity and to build the mindset and skill set of others to lead in a way that cultivates collaboration and innovation. Team leaders and leaders who serve on teams will learn how to lead with questions to develop high-functioning teams that collaborate and share leadership. System leaders will discover how to lead with questions to lead change and to build their capacity to create a coherent learning and leading culture that builds leadership capacity at all levels.
We suggest reading this book cover to cover to get a sense of how the multiple levels of leadership build upon one another to create an aligned coachingbased culture across the district. However, the book is also designed to allow leaders to focus on the parts and chapters that are specific to their leadership role and relationship with other leaders in the district.
By the end of the book, you will acquire a set of tools, practices, and questions that you can use to create a coaching and questioning culture to build individual, team, and system leadership capacity to achieve higher levels of learning and performance.
How This Book Is Organized
This book consists of three parts: (1) The Individual Leader, (2) The Team Leader, and (3) The System Leader. Each part addresses how leading with questions can support leaders to build specific leadership competencies and overall leadership capacity for themselves and others.
Part I, The Individual Leader, shows how individual leaders can lead with questions to cultivate and promote a growth mindset and coaching skill set in themselves and others. Part II, The Team Leader, shifts focus from individual leaders to team leaders. We ask leaders working with or serving on teams to lead with questions to build high-functioning teams and promote shared leadership. Part III, The System Leader, turns the focus to the system leader. We offer research on the essentials of learning organizations and provide coaching and questioning strategies that districts can use to get smarter and create a more inclusive, equitable, and excellent school system for all students. All of the concepts that we discuss about individual leaders in part I are threaded through parts II and III, the sections on team and system leadership.
Part I: The Individual Leader
Chapter 1 calls on leaders to lead with questions rather than telling others what to do. Leaders will explore how to ask questions aligned to a specific purpose and distinguish empowering questions from disempowering questions. This chapter also focuses on leaders asking questions and adopting a coaching stance to effectively manage their efforts to resolve technical problems and generate solutions to adaptive, difficult-to-resolve challenges, and to build that capacity in themselves and others.
Chapter 2 focuses on emotional intelligence and invites leaders to ask questions of themselves and others to build the capacity to be an emotionally intelligent leader who understands and uses self-awareness and self-management to exercise self-control and social awareness to effectively manage relationships with others.
Chapter 3 examines the importance of creating a safe work environment where people can thrive. We show how leading with questions, rather than commanding and controlling, can help leaders build the capacity to develop psychological safety for others to feel free to express vulnerability, take risks, as well as share innovative and courageous ideas and solutions.
Chapter 4 focuses on using inquiry—asking powerful questions and listening deeply—to create welcoming workplaces that promote authentic diversity, inclusion, and equity practices.
Chapter 5 explores how leading with questions can build the capacity to challenge individuals’ immunity to change, unlearn current mental models of leadership that no longer work, and prompt leaders and others to broaden their views, seek feedback, and consider what is possible.
Part II: The Team Leader
Chapter 6 describes how leaders can lead with questions to build highperforming teams. We share the challenges of working with teams and describe the traits and characteristics of high-performing teams. We show how asking questions can set the foundation for team success. We explore the ways that teams come together and provide strategies for making meeting places that promote a growth mindset, foster interpersonal trust, and promote innovation.
Chapter 7 emphasizes how leaders can lead with questions to promote team development and learning. We provide inquiry-based strategies, tools, and frameworks that teams can use to assess and reflect on their individual team performance and the stages of collective team development. We identify key team dynamics and describe ways leaders can lead with questions to build their capacity and that of their teams to effectively manage team dynamics.
In Chapter 8, we discuss leading with questions to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) for teams. We emphasize the importance of adding belonging to the equation and share how leading with questions disrupts the hierarchy of traditional leadership models and provides the opportunity to hear diverse perspectives, promote agency, acknowledge bias, and give voice to team members who might otherwise be marginalized from the work.
Part III: The System Leader
Chapter 9 addresses the importance of districts functioning as learning organizations. We define learning organizations and provide questions and inquiry-based tools to grow organizational knowledge by routinely and regularly gathering feedback and feedforward and analyzing and assessing the impact and costs of district efforts.
In chapter 10, we explore ways system leaders can adopt a coaching stance to lead change, engaging staff in understanding the rationale for the change and involving them in the design of the change effort. We provide questions and approaches that system leaders can use to promote districtwide change efforts and counter resistance, breaking through the collective immunity to change.
Throughout the book, there are Try This practice activities for leaders to learn more about the leadership skills and competencies addressed in each chapter and to sharpen their skills by leading with questions. Each chapter contains Voices From the Field, which are interview responses from practicing leaders and concludes with a set of questions for reflection and discussion.
We also share our personal leadership experiences in an Author’s Story feature. We conclude the book with additional book study questions for reflecting and connecting with others.
Regarding leadership strategies, Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular (2019) write that for current leaders, “rapid, constant, and disruptive change is now the norm, and what succeeded in the past is no longer a guide to what will succeed in the future.” Readily admitting that they alone do not have all the answers, leaders have been forced to reconsider, adapt, and often abandon traditional top-down command and control strategies, and are exploring innovative strategies that will help them meet new demands.
We hope this book demonstrates the power of leading with questions and serves as a handbook for educational leaders, teams, and systems as they build their own leadership capacity and a guide as they coach and build leadership capacity for others.
PART I The Individual Leader
In part I, The Individual Leader, we show how individual leaders can lead with questions to build leadership capacity in themselves and others. We illustrate how individual leaders can adopt a coaching stance to deepen their capacity to function as emotionally intelligent leaders who create psychologically safe environments that promote authentic practices of diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
As a result, they challenge the immunity to change, think in more complex ways, and generate critical and creative solutions. The five foundational concepts—(1) growth mindset and coaching skill set; (2) emotional intelligence; (3) psychological safety; (4) diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (5) immunity to change—presented in part I are woven throughout parts II and III, serving as essential concepts for building capacity for team and system leaders.
CHAPTER 1
Leading With Questions to Build the Mindset and Skill Set for Leaders
Great leaders inspire greatness in others.
—LOLLY DASKAL
This chapter centers on leading with questions to help leaders consider the optimal mindset and skill set needed to build capacity at all levels. We begin with a focus on promoting a growth mindset to ensure that leaders value and understand the need to engage in continuous learning to build their leadership capacity and gain strategies to foster a growth mindset in others. Next, we examine ways leaders can build their capacity to best manage and balance their time between everyday technical problems and deeper adaptive challenges that often require leaders to learn their way to a solution. We then explore how to lead with questions to cultivate and sustain a coaching culture that puts the development of people first and keeps a commitment to growth through inquiry—asking questions and active listening versus telling and directing—at the forefront of their efforts. We will show how a growth mindset and coaching skill set are best suited for building leadership capacity. Lastly, we invite leaders to reflect on a set of guiding questions as they consider what the optimal application of the growth mindset and coaching skill set looks like when building leadership capacity.
Leaders face complex challenges, so they must engage in continuous learning and be able to consider multiple perspectives and develop that capacity in others.
Promoting a Growth Mindset to Lead With Questions
What is the ideal mindset for leaders? Leaders face complex challenges, so they must engage in continuous learning and be able to consider multiple perspectives and develop that capacity in others. To do so requires having a growth mindset.
Most educators are familiar with Carol Dweck’s (2017) work on growth mindset, which she describes as the belief that one’s abilities can be developed through intentional work. By contrast, a fixed mindset suggests that abilities and talents are innate and unchangeable. While educational leaders have long espoused the profound impact of growth and fixed mindset on students and their learning, we have lagged in grasping the importance of adults embracing and practicing a growth mindset in how we teach, lead, learn, and work. Growth mindset leaders are comfortable with what they don’t know, embody curiosity, and are optimistic about the possibility of new learning. Leaders with fixed mindsets, by contrast, clearly focus more on showing what they already know, needing to be the smartest person in the room, and judging opinions and perspectives of themselves and others.
Marilee Adams (2016) refers to a fixed mindset as a judging mindset and a growth mindset as a learning mindset. Table 1.1 lists some of the differences between the two mindsets.
Table 1.1: Judging Mindset Versus Learning Mindset
JUDGING (FIXED) MINDSET
Knows it all already
Sees exclusively from personal perspective
Expresses many statements and opinions
Primarily defensive and protective
Source: Adams, 2016.
LEARNING (GROWTH) MINDSET
Acknowledges and values not knowing
Seeks and considers perspectives of others
Offers many questions and wonderings
Primarily curious and optimistic
Growth, or learning, mindset leaders are not only concerned with their own growth; they are also concerned with the health and effectiveness of the organization. As leaders, they care more about authentic success for the team and the organization than their brand. How do leaders create a growth mindset culture?
According to the NeuroLeadership Institute’s (NLI) 2018 report Growth Mindset Culture, the easiest way to build a growth mindset culture is “to
communicate, teach, and role model growth mindset throughout the company.” The report suggests that individuals and organizations should ask themselves questions: “How can we get better?,” “What might we do differently tomorrow?,” “How might we move beyond this?,” “What is the next thing we might do?,” and “What will happen if we don’t grow?”
This inquiry-based approach can be challenging because leaders often want to just get things done right in the moment. However, leaders who are working to cultivate a growth mindset in themselves and others understand that it entails more than declaration; it requires actions, policies, and practices that embody a growth mindset and, most importantly, it requires intentionality. These leaders recognize the value of asking insightful, thought-provoking questions. They see the importance of creating a culture where more voices are heard, everyone is expected to contribute, and no one person has all the answers. By understanding where our fixed mindset shows up and the steps needed to model a growth mindset, leaders will be better positioned to build their own and others’ leadership capacity and promote a growth mindset culture in their organizations.
Try This!
Which mindset best describes you as a leader? Do you spend most of your time as a growth (learning) mindset leader or a fixed (judging) mindset leader? During your next one-on-one with another leader or staff member or in a team meeting, assess your mindset. Ask yourself these questions.
• How often did I ask questions versus telling and directing?
• How often did I invite and include other perspectives?
• How often did I admit that I was uncertain and didn’t have a ready answer or share my own vulnerability?
• What did I learn about myself as a growth mindset leader?
In short, growth mindset leaders lead with questions to promote new and innovative thinking and leverage learning to meet their goals for improved results.
We must learn our way through adaptive challenges, and those of us who are leading also must change internally to address those challenges.
Approaching Adaptive Challenges With a Growth Mindset
A typical day in the life of a campus and district leader is filled with putting out fires, attending meetings, responding to emails, addressing parent and community concerns and complaints, attending events—the list goes on. When asked to track how they spend their day, leaders often discover that they spend a large portion of their time addressing technical problems or compliance issues. Ronald Heifetz, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-developer of the adaptive leadership framework (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009), notes that these sorts of technical problems are easy to identify and lend themselves to quick, concrete solutions. While those problems must be solved by someone, it’s quite possible that, as leaders, we gravitate toward technical problems because we generally feel more comfortable with problems we already know how to solve.
Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are challenges we do not have the answer for. We must learn our way through adaptive challenges, and those of us who are leading also must change internally to address those challenges. Heifetz and colleagues (2009) describe adaptive challenges as complex and ambiguous in nature, often calling for a change in attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs on the part of those addressing them. We are often uncomfortable with adaptive challenges because we don’t immediately know how to solve them; however, it is exactly those adaptive challenges that lead to the deep cultural shifts needed to achieve improved and sustainable results.
The ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding adaptive challenges are why a growth mindset is essential. Unlike technical problems that generally have quick solutions, adaptive challenges are persistent and involve complex issues. Effectively teaching mathematics, reading, and writing so that all students learn, cultivating high-functioning teams that authentically collaborate and innovate, and eliminating systemic inequalities in schooling are some examples of adaptive challenges that educational leaders face.
Table 1.2 lists some of the differences between technical problems and adaptive challenges.
What does this have to do with a growth mindset? A growth mindset is essential for addressing adaptive challenges because, as mentioned, these challenges almost always require new learning. Eleanor Drago-Severson (2009), professor of educational leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College and a specialist in adult development, distinguishes between informational and transformational learning, stating that informational learning “focuses
Table 1.2: Technical Problems Versus Adaptive Challenges
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
Have solutions that can be implemented with current know-how
Involve knowledge and capacity (to solve the problem) that already exist
Are easy to identify
Often lend themselves to quick and easy solutions
Often can be solved by an authority or expert
Require change in just one or a few places; often contained within organizational boundaries
Are generally well received by people
Have solutions that can often be implemented quickly—even by edict
Source: Heifetz et al., 2009.
ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES
Can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties
Require the creation of knowledge and tools while addressing the challenge
Are difficult to identify (easy to deny)
Require changes in values, beliefs, roles, relationships, and approaches to work
Empower people with the problem do the work of solving it
Require change in numerous places and usually cross organizational boundaries
Can be challenging to acknowledge, generating resistance
Require experiments and new discoveries to find solutions; can take a long time to implement and cannot be implemented by edict
on increasing the amount of knowledge and skill a person possesses” (p. 11) while transformational learning refers to the “development of the cognitive, emotional, interpersonal and intrapersonal capacities that enable a person to manage the complexities of work” (p. 11) such as leading, teaching, and addressing adaptive challenges. Adaptive challenges, such as building leadership capacity, inviting diverse perspectives, and adopting a coaching stance, require leaders to change in significant ways, both engaging in and facilitating transformational learning to make progress.
Despite the importance and lasting impact of addressing adaptive challenges, leaders at all levels in the organization still spend a significant amount of their time addressing technical issues. Why is this the case? There are several reasons.
In the past, a leader’s ability to address technical problems was expected and often viewed as a strong indicator of successful leadership. To some extent, that vision of successful leadership still holds true. Education leaders are accustomed to and often rewarded for addressing demanding day-to-day compliance routines. They often find it difficult to slow down and go deep to address adaptive challenges that could lead to building capacity and fostering a growth mindset culture.
Leaders also settle for focusing on technical problems over adaptive challenges because technical problems are often resolved by directing and telling,
whereas adaptive challenges frequently require asking questions of others and engaging in learning and new ways of thinking. Due to the increased importance of high-stakes testing and relentless focus on results, for both students and adult professionals, schools and school systems are more oriented toward performance than they are toward learning. How well do you manage your time and energy relative to technical problems and adaptive challenges?
Try This!
Split your tasks into two categories: (1) those that require low attention (technical), such as clearing out texts, emails, and other communication notifications, and (2) those that need high attention (adaptive), such as leading a learning walk, launching a coaching model, or analyzing budget projections for the upcoming year. Then, match your tasks with your energy. Are you at your best in the early morning, mid-morning, or afternoon, or are you best at night? Being mindful by deliberately separating technical from adaptive tasks and matching the tasks with your energy and attention levels can help you do more in less time.
Though leaders spend more time on technical problems for myriad reasons, according to Heifetz and colleagues (2009), the most common cause of leadership failure is when leaders treat adaptive challenges as technical problems. Leaders who know the difference understand that adaptive challenges involve more people and take much longer to resolve. Effective leaders also know that most complex and enduring challenges contain technical and adaptive components. Successful leaders take the time to identify the difference and devote time to both.
Let’s consider these two examples: Imagine that someone wants to work on healthier eating. The technical solutions to this problem might be to work with a nutritionist, find out the caloric and nutritional content of favorite foods, find some resources with healthy recipes, and so on. Adaptive approaches might involve discovering your true motivation for eating in healthier ways and figuring out what your triggers are for unhealthy eating. An example from Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey’s (2009) Immunity to Change cites a person who repeatedly tried—always unsuccessfully—to lose weight by cultivating better eating habits using technical solutions. Only when he realized that in his mind the plentiful amounts of high-calorie foods that were a staple of his family of origin’s mealtime were strongly linked to
love, connection, comfort, and trust was he able to rewrite that internal script to make external changes in habits.
Now, imagine a person preparing to retire. There are many complex, technical problems to solve—from health insurance to replacing your work computer—and it takes time, research, and focus to proceed. In addition to the technical problems, there are also adaptive challenges for many people as they face retirement. They must confront the questions: Who am I without my job? What is my identity now? What do I enjoy? What do I want to learn? What do I want the rest of my life to look like? What do I want my legacy to be?
These situations pose technical problems and adaptive challenges and thus require informational learning —new knowledge and skills—as well as transformational learning —internal change. A singularly technical solution or an adaptive approach would be insufficient to address these situations.
Figure 1.1 shows some educational challenges with technical and adaptive components.
Challenge or Problem
Improving teaching and learning for all students
Technical Components
• How many students passed, and how many did not?
• How many students need to attend tutoring and in what subjects?
• How many teachers do we have who are willing and able to tutor before and after school and on Saturdays?
• Who will teach what?
Ensuring that all students receive high-quality instruction
• Train evaluators on the new appraisal system.
• Train leaders on human resources guidelines.
• Conduct walkthroughs and give written feedback.
• Conduct regular performance reviews.
Adaptive Components
• Where are students succeeding, and where are they struggling?
• What are our insights about the causes for this?
• Who is teaching what effectively, and who is not?
• How can we create a culture of trust and vulnerability on grade-level teams so that everyone can deepen their teaching effectiveness?
• What do we need to do differently—stop or start doing— based on these results?
• How do we need to change in order to achieve better learning and results for our students?
• Develop a shared understanding of effective teaching and learning.
• Create a culture of feedback.
• Engage in transformational professional learning.
FIGURE 1.1: Educational challenges with technical and adaptive components.
To stop directing and telling, leaders should begin practicing the foundational coaching practices of asking and listening.
As we can see, many of the ongoing challenges we face in education have both technical and adaptive components. Most leaders are highly capable when dealing with the technical aspects of problems; however, when they fail to address the adaptive challenges, they end up with surface-level solutions rather than generating more systemic and innovative change.
Leading With Questions to Create a Coaching Culture
In a coaching culture, no single leader or person has all the best answers and solutions. Rather, the most effective leaders in a coaching culture are those who ask thought-provoking questions to elicit the best thinking of others. Leaders who embody this coaching stance model transparency and public learning by asking open-ended questions with genuine curiosity. Leaders then explore the answers to those questions collaboratively with those they lead to determine innovative solutions.
Underlying this capacity to put the development of people at the center is a growth mindset and a coaching mindset. The coaching mindset, like the growth mindset, is about being curious rather than judgmental and focused on learning rather than demonstrating expertise. Coaching leaders believe that others are resourceful and have valuable ideas and perspectives. They ask powerful questions that prompt deep thinking and engage in active listening to hear what a person is saying (or not saying) rather than listening for right or wrong answers. By adopting a coaching stance of genuine curiosity and purposeful inquiry, asking questions designed to spur thinking, and actively listening, leaders keep growth in the foreground.
Leading with questions rather than telling others what to do creates a coaching culture that recognizes and values many voices and is one where people engage in ongoing continuous learning and work together with a deep commitment toward a shared vision rather than surface-level compliance to directives.
Telling is deeply engrained in our mental models of leadership and having all the answers is the expectation for leaders. To stop directing and telling, leaders should begin practicing the foundational coaching practices of asking and listening.
Try This!
The next time you are prepared to tell someone what to do, try asking these questions first:
• What do you think you should do?
• What do you hope to accomplish?
• How will that action help you accomplish your goals?
• How do you feel about your leadership?
The more leaders use questions to build capacity, the more others begin to trust them and believe that leaders want to distribute leadership, that leaders request and value their input, and that leaders believe in team members’ capacity to lead and learn.
Voices From the Field
Michael Hinojosa, Former Superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District
Michael Hinojosa began his tenure by asking questions, and he used the responses to shape his entry plan. Hinojosa continued to lead with questions as he built the capacity of his leadership team, asking team members to reflect on and respond to a series of questions every quarter throughout the school year, including the following:
1. Which of your goals was the most productive? Which was the least productive? Reflect on and explain why you chose your answers.
2. What are three professional development or learning experiences from the last year that had the biggest impact on your performance?
3. What are the three most impactful relationships that have assisted you in the last six months? List the individuals by name (one must be external from your team or outside of the district) and why you selected them.
4. Which department that you supervise requires the most attention and which one requires the least? Outline your reasons for selecting each.
The team members met individually with Hinojosa where they discussed their responses and were asked more probing questions, prompting them to explain the rationale for their decisions and to think about how what they were doing was related to overall district goals. Asking these purposeful questions, Hinojosa explained, helped him gain insight into team members’ thinking and knowledge of their actions as a team. He also shared that asking questions and actively listening enabled him to signal what he valued as a leader and allowed him to guide each team member’s actions without directing and telling them what to do. He would often quip, “If I have to tell you what to do, I don’t need you.”
Hinojosa shared that leading with questions for him was both deliberate and intuitive. He further acknowledged that “asking the right questions and asking questions that fit the circumstance matter.” For example, he shared that in his interactions with principals, he deliberately asks two open-ended questions: “What are your major challenges?” and “What are your major concerns?” When working with an ad hoc issue, such as declining enrollment, the questions become more specific, and he continues to probe and iterate to identify the root cause of the problem.
By embedding questions into his routine leadership practices, including regular learning walks and campus visits, Hinojosa enabled campus and district leaders to experience the power of questions to build leadership capacity within the context of their real work. The questioning approach Hinojosa and his team used cascaded through the system, promoting a growth mindset, and cultivating a leading and learning culture in the district.
When asked about the power of leading with questions, Hinojosa shared that “questions help to develop ownership and provide the opportunity for people to help create solutions.” He concluded that “if done well, [leading with questions] can engage, energize, and empower individuals for a common cause.” (M. Hinojosa, personal communication, March 5, 2018)
When leaders ask powerful questions, they make significant strides toward fostering a growth mindset and developing a coaching skill set that will help build leadership capacity in themselves and others.
Asking the Right Questions
While there is power in asking questions to build capacity, we know that asking the right questions matters. Michael Marquardt (2014), author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask, reminds us how important it is to ask the right questions and warns that asking the wrong or inappropriate question has huge consequences and can result in creating a culture of defensiveness, disempowerment, and distrust.
Timing—knowing when to ask the right question—also makes a difference. Daniel Pink (2018) cautions leaders to be careful not to ask a question too soon—before a person can hear it or when a person can’t hear it. It is likely that as leaders you have experienced asking a question that initially goes unanswered only to have the same question resurface at a more optimal time when the listener is able and ready to hear it and respond. Leading with questions successfully requires leaders to ask the right questions based on what they hope to accomplish at a time when it will generate the most reflection and learning (Marquardt, 2014).
How, then, might leaders ensure that they ask the right questions at the right time? It seems reasonable that determining what you hope to accomplish, or the purpose for the question, is an important consideration. Are you trying to build trust, focus attention on what you value, demonstrate concern, or boost responsibility? Leaders ask questions based on multiple purposes ranging from managing people, building teams, and shaping strategy, to generating new ideas and solving problems. Let’s examine four broad purposes for education leaders to ask questions to build leadership capacity.
1. Asking questions to learn
2. Asking questions to focus on what matters
3. Asking questions to empower
4. Asking questions to build personal accountability for actions
Asking Questions to Learn
When asking questions to learn, leaders often begin with open-ended questions that prompt others to reflect and elaborate on who they are and what they value. Additional questions might be more closely tied to the specifics of what the leader wants to learn.
For example, a principal supervisor might ask school leaders, “What personal or professional values are most important for you to keep in mind as
you make this decision?” This question would provide insight into who these principals are as leaders and help the principal supervisor assess the leader’s level of commitment to the challenge or topic at hand.
A principal or superintendent might ask a member of their school or district leadership team, “Who are emerging leaders I need to be aware of?” Asking this question allows school or district leaders to learn about potential leaders in whom they might want to invest time and resources to build the leadership pipeline.
In some instances, it might be beneficial to test the question with a trusted colleague. You might need to follow up your initial question with additional probing questions. Asking questions using words such as describe, explain , say more, clarify, elaborate, and expand will allow you to get into more depth or breadth on a topic (Marquardt, 2014). For example, if the response to the question about values is, “I value innovation,” the principal supervisor might ask, “When you say innovation , what do you mean? Can you describe or explain it?” When given names of emerging leaders, the superintendent or principal might follow up with, “Can you say more about the qualities you are seeing that cause you to identify this person as a leader?”
Asking Questions to Focus on What Matters
Education leaders ask questions to create parameters, focus attention on what is important, and show what they value. For example, when principal supervisors ask principals, “What leadership actions are you taking to improve the quality of teaching and learning in your classrooms?” they are signaling that instructional leadership is important. Similarly, a principal asking a teacher, “What changes have you made to your instructional practice based on the instructional coaching you received?” shows that there is an expectation that instructional coaching should lead to changes in teacher practice.
The “mere measurement effect,” as described in the introduction (page 1), suggests that leaders can provide a roadmap for desirable behaviors and practices by simply asking a question (Morwitz et al., 1993). One superintendent that we worked with would ask members of his leadership team, “Who are the three individuals with whom you have built relationships in the last three months?” followed by probing questions such as, “Why did you select them?” and “How did they help you accomplish your goals?” The initial question and the probing questions signaled to the team that working with others was an expectation and that the individuals they chose to work with should assist them in accomplishing their goals. By asking questions, the leader was able
to share what was expected and important without directing and telling and staff were able to think, reflect, share their voices, and own their actions.
Asking Questions to Empower
Asking empowering questions provides the opportunity for others to exercise agency and voice, promotes ownership, and evokes responsibility. Empowering questions often begin with what or how and invite people to ponder, wonder, imagine, and discover (Lasley, Kellogg, Michaels, & Brown, 2015). For example, “How are you feeling about the progress you have made so far?,” “What would represent success for you?,” “What is your hope?,” and “How would you describe the current reality?” are questions that leaders can use to empower others. Questions to empower are often about developing the person rather than just directing them to solve a problem.
Try This!
During a conversation or a meeting, try asking a few what and how questions that invite people to wonder, imagine, and discover. For example:
1. What is your hope?
2. What do you want?
3. Imagine you had a magic wand, what would you do?
4. What are you committed to?
5. How might I help you?
Leaders who lead with questions must also be cognizant of questions that disempower. According to Marquardt (2014), asking questions about why someone did not or cannot succeed or what’s wrong can drain energy, threaten self-esteem, and often result in people seeing themselves as part of the problem rather than the source of solutions. These questions often ask why or why not. For example, a question like “Why are you spending time coaching and giving feedback to high performers?” implies judgment and is disempowering. Similarly, “Why haven’t you been able to make a bigger impact on the principals you’ve been coaching?” focuses energy on the person as the problem rather than inviting holistic solutions. Asking questions that enable leaders to reflect, analyze different perspectives, plan, and act builds their capacity and empowers them to solve their own problems.
Leaders who lead with questions must also be cognizant of questions that disempower.
Try This!
Pay attention to the questions you ask, and when you hear yourself asking disempowering questions, change them to empowering questions. For example, instead of asking, “Why were you not able to meet the deadline?” try asking, “What do you need to say no to?” and “What can you stop doing to make room for what’s important?”
Asking Questions to Build Personal Accountability for Actions
Lastly, we emphasize the importance of asking questions to build personal accountability. In conversations with school and district leaders about how leading with questions helps to build personal accountability, they’ve shared that asking questions rather than telling others what to do shifts the accountability from them to others and promotes personal accountability for one’s actions. When people can share their expertise and perspectives and make decisions, they are more inclined to own their actions. Over time, this ownership strengthens their ability to problem solve and engage in critical thinking.
William Hite, former superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, shared that he asks team members, “How have you made others smarter about the work and why?” Without directing, this question signals to leaders that they are expected to build capacity in others and are also responsible for figuring out how and why this is important. These kinds of questions emphasize leaders’ accountability for their actions to build collective capacity. How might you use questions to build personal accountability for actions? Leaders can harness the power of leading with questions by aligning questions with specific purposes and, as Marquardt (2014) reminds us, the better the question, the better the insight and the better the solution.
Here’s a story of a leader who leads with questions to build the mindset and skill set of his team and to create a coaching culture within his organization that empowers others and facilitates learning and accountability.
Voices From the Field
Gerald Hudson, Superintendent, Cedar Hill Independent School District
Gerald Hudson is a trained leadership coach. Hudson knows from personal experience that coaching “brings out the best in people” and when he leads with questions, he is “applying what worked best for me” in terms of self-development. He elaborates, sharing that throughout his leadership journey as an assistant principal, a principal, and a principal supervisor, the most effective development— both of him and by him—happens with questions that help people self-reflect, learn, and find the solutions to their unique challenges. While “command and control” is often the norm, Hudson knows that for the individual leader’s personal health as well as for the health of the organization, leadership, innovation, decision making, and problem solving must be distributed throughout the system. He shared that when he was a principal supervisor, the principals he coached soon knew the following questions he was likely to ask.
• What is the most important thing for me to know?
• What have you done?
• What have you decided?
• Who have you talked to?
• Where do you feel most confident and clear?
• What are you unsure about?
• What help do you need?
Soon, the principals had integrated this way of thinking and processing and were more self-reflective in their actions.
Hudson told a story about being in Hawaii and watching the sunset over the ocean. He got his phone out to take a photograph. Looking through the lens, he quickly realized that the photo would not capture the brilliance and expanse of the sunset. He likened this awareness to his understanding that great coaching questions illuminate—like that magnificent sunset—deeper levels of awareness than simple information-based questions.
Hudson says, “What does that look like?” is an illuminating question. Understanding that we all have our own unique mental maps of various concepts, he related a process through which a deep and diverse understanding of the concept of student engagement occurred in Cedar Hill school district. While on a campus walk, Hudson asked a senior district leader, “What does student engagement in the classroom look like?” and “What do you expect to see when you’re seeing engagement?” They engaged in this illuminating conversation with the campus principal and then with other principals, asking more questions like, “At the highest level of engagement, what would you see?” and “When students are engaged in the classroom, what will you not see?” Through the process of asking questions, these leaders were able to collaboratively create an aligned definition of a key concept, with clarity about what is tight and what is loose (what is nonnegotiable and what individuals can address as they see fit). They created a differentiated rubric that indicates depth of engagement. Hudson notes that if a checklist on student engagement had been created in isolation in the central office, principals would have complied. However, being part of an ongoing collaborative coaching conversation, they were committed to and capable of fostering engagement on their campuses. The practice of asking these sorts of powerful questions and deeply listening to the answers is at the heart of powerful inquiry, leading with questions, and developing and deepening capacity in others.
These coaching conversations build connection and trust. Hudson, in most circumstances, takes the coaching approach and functions as an ally, working side by side with members of the organization and empowering them to excellence. (G. Hudson, personal communication, October 12, 2023)
Conclusion
Given the complexity of challenges education leaders face, leaders admit that the traditional leadership model of knowing all the answers and directing and telling others what to do is not sustainable. Many leaders report that this model of leadership is leading to burnout and stress, and limits leadership potential and growth. As a result, they are seeking a collaborative leadership model that allows them to collectively build their leadership capacity and that of others so that together they can effectively address the issues they face.
Effective leaders understand the need to promote a culture of continuous learning and have discovered the power of leading with questions to prompt thinking and reflection that will lead to more innovative solutions. In short, leaders who combine a growth mindset with a coaching skill set and balance their time with technical problems and adaptive challenges are better equipped to continuously empower others, building their leadership capacity to learn and innovate.
Building Mindset and Skill Set for Leaders: Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Use the following questions for individual or group reflection and discussion.
1. What will you do to strengthen your growth mindset so that you can develop and deepen your capacity to lead with questions? How will you cultivate this capacity in others?
2. As you reflect on the four purposes for asking questions, in what area or areas are you already effective? What do you want to grow? How will you do this?
3. What will you do to push yourself to uncover the adaptive challenges underlying the technical problems that you encounter as a leader? How will you use questions to build capacity in yourself and in others to name and make progress with the adaptive challenges?
Powerful Inquiry
Leading With Questions to Build Leadership Capacity in Your School and District
Inquiry—when aligned with specific goals and framed in an empowering manner—has the power to build social-emotional intelligence, foster interpersonal trust and safety, and challenge the resistance to change that maintains the status quo. In Powerful Inquiry: Leading With Questions to Build Leadership Capacity in Your School and District , authors Donna J. Micheaux and Jennifer L. Parvin provide K–12 leaders with strategies, tools, and frameworks to develop their own and their staff’s capacity for self-awareness, growth, and openness. Practical, insightful, and packed with resources, Powerful Inquiry positions leaders to challenge the traditional leadership model by welcoming all voices within their schools and establishing an evolving learning organization that benefits everyone.
Readers will:
• Lead with questions to establish a growth mindset within themselves and their colleagues
• Distinguish between empowering and disempowering questions
• Acknowledge bias and address any resistance getting in the way of change
• Promote equity and inclusion by giving voice to marginalized individuals
• Use inquiry-based strategies, tools, and frameworks to improve their learning organization
“Powerful Inquiry is clear, concise, practical, and easy to follow, and there are so many great takeaways for leaders to try when building individual, team, and system leadership capacity. The authors present strategies, practices, protocols, and tools with a connection to research and authentic examples.”
—ROSALIND POON
Vice Principal, Hugh Boyd Secondary School, Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
“This book is a great resource for anyone interested in improving their leadership skills, whether currently leading or looking to transition to a leadership position. I found myself making notes as I read of things I want to change or improve when interacting with both individuals and teams in my work.”
—PAULA MATHEWS
STEM Instructional Coach, Dripping Springs Independent School District, Texas