Question Styles for Non-Profit Directors
Work Through Blind Spots for Better Decisions
If you have taken part in decision-making processes, you understand the importance of embracing diverse ways of thinking. It allows creative ideas to flourish and uncovers hidden problems. This usually involves delving into our blind spots, which can be challenging. Yet, it's essential for non-profit directors to do this work to make informed decisions.
The recent HBR article, "The Art of Asking Smarter Questions" (Chevalier, Dalsace, & Barsoux, 2024), is invaluable reading for your entire board. It explores the idea that there are five domains of questions—”investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective”—and that individuals favor certain domains while avoiding others. The concepts and tools in this article will empower any board to better serve its mission.
The authors highlight precisely why asking smart questions is crucial:
“The questions that get leaders and teams into trouble are often the ones they fail to ask. These are questions that don’t come spontaneously; they require prompting and conscious effort. They may run counter to your and your team’s individual or collective habits, preoccupations, and patterns of interaction.”
In over two decades of advising and working in non-profits, I've encountered many situations that exemplify this statement, often despite leaders' deliberate efforts to consider all perspectives. The authors' research shows why collaborative teams make better decisions. Across their study of 1,200 executives, question styles were evenly distributed, but individuals often left out certain question domains.
Board and committee chairs must know how to facilitate decision-making processes that elicit questions from all domains to arrive at informed decisions. The article provides a self-assessment tool to help identify one's own style, including blind spots, and offers excellent ideas for leveraging these insights to improve question-forming abilities.
It is worthwhile for all board members to use the self-assessment to understand where they can provide the most value in board discussions, and where they need to listen to others who ask different kinds of questions. Skills like this are best developed through self-reflective learning; merely reading the article and taking the test will not enhance question-asking abilities. Once you understand the five domains, spend a few weeks consciously noting how you ask questions, and afterward, reflect on whether drawing from different domains might have yielded valuable information.
If your board adopts the concepts in this article, everyone might need to work through some discomfort at first, as none of us like to shine a light on our blind spots. Not every decision will need a full examination from all five domains, but you should know which ones you are, and are not, using. It's also helpful for all board members to know which domains are well-represented among the other directors and which are absent or minimal.
Regardless of whether you are a board leader or a director, you'll find value in this article. It includes concepts, tools, and examples of executives in different industries and how they strategically use questions. All the content applies to non-profits.
As a director, you're obligated to make informed decisions. By understanding how different types of questions aid the decision-making process, you'll be better prepared for meetings and will better serve your members and other stakeholders.
Resources:
The article mentioned above is “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions” by Arnaud Chevallier, Frédéric Dalsace, and Jean-Louis Barsoux, in the May-June 2024 edition of Harvard Business Review. Note: the online version of this article is behind a paywall, but HBR allows free access to two free articles each month. The online version also has an audio option for those who learn better through listening.
Another excellent resource about the importance of opening up our blind spots in decision-making is the book, Know What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen by Michael A. Roberto (2009)