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Good Leaders Ask Great Questions

Your Foundation for Successful Leadership

John C. Maxwell

Center Street, 2014

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Leadership guru John Maxwell has spent 40 years asking penetrating questions about leadership. He includes some of these questions – and their answers – in this leadership manual, one of more than 70 books he has written. If you have a question concerning leadership, you’ll probably find the answer here. Maxwell believes in self-education through asking questions. Over the course of four years early in his career as a pastor, Maxwell paid America’s top religious leaders $100 each so he could spend 30 minutes asking them questions about success. That was almost all of Maxwell’s weekly earnings at the time. Besides being a leadership scholar, Maxwell has a great sense of humor and includes offbeat questions from readers, like, “Do you think daylight saving time could be contributing to global warming? The longer we have sunlight, the more it heats the atmosphere.” Aside from their entertainment value, Maxwell includes silly questions so you will relax about possibly sounding uninformed. getAbstract recommends his question-and-answer exploration of leadership to novice and established leaders.

Summary

Leaders’ Questions

Leaders must ask questions to develop and grow. This holds true during your first leadership assignments as well as throughout your career. The more questions leaders ask, the more answers they receive. The more answers they receive, the better equipped they become to lead. Never worry about appearing foolish or ignorant when you ask a question. You may be surprised when everyone around you develops more respect for you, not less, because you did the one thing that most leaders are terrified to do: You admitted that you don’t know everything.

Motivational speaker and self-help author Anthony Robbins explains, “Quality questions create a quality life.” Questions are important to leaders for eight primary reasons:

“You only get answers to the questions you ask” – Asking questions and heeding the answers is the path to self-education. Don’t worry that asking questions may make you look stupid. As Sharper Image founder Richard Thalheimer said, “It is better to look uninformed than to be uninformed.” The search for answers begins with a question.
“Questions unlock and open doors” – Expose hidden information...

About the Author

Best-selling author John C. Maxwell has 25 million books in print. He’s a leadership coach and frequent public speaker.

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L. S. 9 years ago

Summary lends itself to the persuasive content that learning (through formulated questions) will aid in improved leadership. Good read.

Good Leaders Ask Great Questions

Your Foundation for Successful Leadership

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