The Cranky Middle Manager Show #316 The Final Cranky Show and the Future of Work with John Blackwell
The Cranky Middle Manager Show #210 Just Ask with Gary Cohen
Posted on 10. Oct, 2009 by Wayne in General, Podcast
Today we talk to Gary Cohen about his book “Just Ask Leadership- Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions”. Well we have some questions for HIM. Also, we look at Sir Percival who didn’t ask enough questions, Voltaire (who asked a lot of them, usually in annoying fashion) and a webinar workshop for sales people who don’t ask enough before they start talking.
Gary Cohen, author of “Just Ask Leadership”
Hey, don’t forget our webinar workshop on “How to Conduct Great Web Demos and Sales Calls”. Click here for more information and to register.
Show Notes
0:00 Welcome to the show one and all. Today we dedicate this episode to Sir Percival who could have made the Grail quest a lot shorter and saved us Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot. Oh well….. Too late now.
2:25 The quote of the week is from Voltaire. What do your questions say about you?
3:20 Welcome Gary Cohen to the show. What does he mean by “asking great questions”? It turns out there might not be any silly questions, but there are destructive, negative questions. We get an example of a good question.
5:50 Drucker said the leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future will need to know how to ask. I’ll let Gary take it from here….
8:35 What are some of the questions that get us visibility to the rest of the organizations? “what is it that our customers expect of us?” and you can ask that of any person in the organization.
11:20 Are you managing the future or are you managing the present? It’s so easy to get caught up in day to day stuff you don’t really move forward.
14:45 As we get promoted, it’s hard to shift to being responsible for more time. Yeah, we needed our job to be harder.
18:45 Therapy time for Wayne…. my mother always told me “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it”. Apparently the same thing is true for questions.
22:00 What about remote teams? How can we ask questions that create accountability between teammates? Start with understanding the goal, rather than the barriers.
Gary’s Resources
Leading Up
On Intelligence
Predictably Irrational
Don’t let the weasels get you down!
