As a leader, asking questions is a valuable way to steer your team or a specific individual forward. Even though these seem fairly simple, these leadership questions can help you bring a diagnosis (if necessary) or identify potential solutions.

1. What’s the bottom line? When you are navigating a situation or challenge, it’s easy to get caught up in all the details and chaos associated with it. Try to think through it to identify the root of the issue. Then you can work on that. Don’t waste energy working on subsidiary problems.

2. What’s the question here? Team members often bring me an extended summary of a particular matter with multiple levels of challenge or concern to be navigated. Identifying the main question will make it easier to weigh it out and provide direction.

3. What’s the next step? Every journey to a destination begins with a single step. Rather than getting caught up in thinking through a whole project, I find it helpful when there are multiple projects swirling around to identify the next step in each. Then I decide which of these steps I can take now and how to begin moving forward. Maybe a simple phone call or email would move the ball “down the field”.

Any useful questions that you have identified in your leadership?