Lead with Questions

I have always been curious. It is said that farmers are a curious lot. I was born on the farm and grew up around the farm, so maybe that’s why I am so curious.

Cheryl and I studied French for a year at the Institut de Tourraine in Tours, France. We were in classes together through most of our studies, and Cheryl “talked” to me often about embarrassing her in the classroom. She performed better than me on our dictations, so she was better at grammar than I was. However, since I asked a lot of questions in the classroom and I was not shy about speaking in class, I became a more fluent speaker than she.

In a third-degree class, our professor asked me: “Etes-vous Chinois, Monsieur Cox?”  Before this blond-haired blue-eyed fellow could respond, Monsieur Herot said that since I asked so many questions, I must be Chinese.

One of my mentors, Avery Willis, spoke many times as he traveled with me across eastern Europe. After he chose me to lead one of the regions of the world for the IMB, he told me that he first became interested in me because I asked hard questions that made him think before responding. I don’t recall planning hard questions to ask him, so I guess it is just my nature to ask a lot of questions.

I ask a lot of questions because I do not know the answers. My grandkids—the preschoolers at least—think I know everything because for every question that they ask me, I always have a response. Cheryl bought me a T shirt a couple of years ago that says, “Papa knows everything. If he doesn’t know he makes stuff up really fast!”

There are certainly many questions that I cannot answer, but that was never true of Jesus. He knew all the answers, and yet he focused so much of his interaction with people on asking them questions. The four Gospels record over 300 (exact number depends on the translation) questions that Jesus asked.

Fifty years ago Grady Nutt wrote a little book called “Being Me.” The premise of the book is summed up in this statement: I am a person of worth created in the image of God to relate and to live. God created us as relational beings, and, as such, we grow through asking and responding to each other’s questions.

Jesus taught that we are changed as much by what we say as what we hear. Mark 7:15 (NIV) “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’”

Jesus asked listeners a question to explain the point of a parable. He answered questions with questions. He asked questions for opinions or to remind people of what they already knew. His questions warmed up a crowd or provoked an argument.

We ask questions for information, but Jesus asked questions to provoke transformation. We ask questions for answers, but Jesus asked questions for awareness.

Good leaders ask questions. A leader who leads with questions will usually be more effective than a leader who only leads by telling.