Most leaders do not suffer from a shortage of advice. If anything, we are magnificently overstocked. Yet many leaders know this frustrating pattern: “I’ve explained it three times. They agreed every time. Nothing changed.”
The problem may not be stubbornness, carelessness, or a secret employee plot to test your blood pressure. It may be the way the brain responds to being told what to do.
Leaders who ask more and tell less work with the brain rather than trying to drag it uphill. Questions create relevance, invite discovery, and build ownership. Advice may produce a polite nod. A well-timed question can produce the far more useful response: “Ah. I see it now.”
Why Good Advice So Often Goes Nowhere
1. They hear you—but the message does not feel like theirs
Attention and behavior change depend partly on dopamine. Dopamine levels rise when people recognize relevance in a message (Davachi, D. L., and Keifer, D. T., 2010, “Learning That Lasts Through the Ages,” NeuroLeadership Journal). When people have no hand in forming the conclusion, they may hear every word and still file it mentally under “interesting things my boss cares about.”
2. There is no novelty
The brain notices what is new, different, or unexpected. Repeat the same instruction in the same way and it eventually becomes verbal wallpaper. Think of the child receiving a detailed pre-visit briefing about good behavior at Grandma’s house. The parent delivers a polished keynote; the child hears, “Blah, blah, blah…cookies.” Your team may be doing the adult version.
3. The emotional brain never clocks in
Instructions can engage rational thought without creating a memorable experience. Emotion focuses attention and signals that something matters. When the amygdala is engaged, recall improves. A question that connects a problem to pride, frustration, purpose, or consequence is more likely to stick than another recital of the procedure manual.
Questions Turn Answers into Insights
Ask yourself: When are you most likely to listen, generate ideas, and take ownership—when someone hands you the answer, or when you help discover it?
People are more likely to remember and reuse conclusions they reach for themselves. That is the practical power of a coach-like leader. Coaching is not simply a nicer way to give instructions. Its fundamental move is to replace reflexive telling with purposeful asking.
Some problems do call for direct instruction. If the building is on fire, skip the reflective inquiry and point to the exit. But many recurring performance, process, and customer challenges need a fresh way of seeing the situation. Questions help people connect ideas, test assumptions, and generate that sudden “Eureka” moment we call insight.
Insight activates the brain’s reward system and can trigger dopamine—the so-called “happy chemical.” The search for our own answer is itself rewarding. Insight also engages the hippocampus, which supports long-term memory, and the amygdala, which helps mark the experience as significant. Because the solution connects with what we already know, it forms richer neural pathways and becomes easier to apply elsewhere.
Example 1: The Service Manager and the Repeat Call
A technician returns from a customer site after a repair, but the same equipment fails again the next day. The manager could say, “You need to slow down, complete the checklist, and test the whole system.” Accurate? Probably. Memorable? About as memorable as hold music.
Instead, the manager asks these kinds of questions:
· “Walk me through what you noticed when you arrived.”
· “What led you to focus on that component?”
· “What information might we have gathered before closing the call?”
· “If you were returning to the site now, what would you test differently?”
· “What will you build into your next service call so this is less likely to happen again?”
The technician identifies the missed system check and proposes a new closeout habit. The manager has not merely extracted the “right answer”; the technician has built the reasoning behind it and owns the next step.
Example 2: The Administrative Services Manager and the Bottleneck
An administrative specialist is struggling with a backlog of purchase requests. The manager’s first impulse may be to prescribe a color-coded tracker with twelve tabs and enough conditional formatting to qualify as modern art.
A coaching approach sounds different:
· “Where in the process do requests tend to stall?”
· “Which steps genuinely require your judgment, and which could be standardized?”
· “What patterns do you see in the incomplete requests?”
· “What could requesters receive up front that would reduce rework?”
· “What is one change you could test this week, and how will you know it worked?”
The specialist recognizes that most delays begin with missing cost-center information and drafts a simple intake template. Because the solution emerged from the specialist’s own analysis, implementation is no longer the manager’s project being “rolled out.” It is the specialist’s improvement being put to work.
Example 3: The Facility-Management Sales Professional and the Hidden Cost
A prospective customer says, “Your price is higher than our current provider’s.” The sales professional could launch into a heroic monologue about superior service. That usually produces two things: more talking and a customer quietly checking the time.
Instead, the sales professional asks these kinds of questions:
· “What is working well with your current facility-management arrangement?”
· “Where do service gaps create the most disruption for your team or building occupants?”
· “What happens operationally when a work order is delayed or has to be reopened?”
· “How are you measuring the cost of downtime, repeat visits, and internal follow-up?”
· “If those issues were reduced, what would that make possible for your team?”
· “Which outcomes would you need to see to feel confident that a change was worthwhile?”
The customer connects recurring service failures with lost staff time, occupant complaints, and risk—not just the line-item fee. The conversation shifts from “Why are you more expensive?” to “What is the total value of solving this properly?” Buy-in grows because the customer has articulated the business case rather than having it delivered in brochure-sized chunks.
Coaching Is Not Just for the Calendar
It is easy to treat coaching as something reserved for formal one-to-one meetings—the corporate equivalent of taking out the good dishes. That is a mistake.
The best coaching questions often appear in ordinary moments: after a customer call, beside a service vehicle, during a project huddle, or in the hallway. A question such as “What do you think is really getting in the way?” can create clarity faster than three follow-up meetings and a slide deck nobody requested.
Check out a related post: Coach in Real Time—The Playful Power-Up Edition
Curiosity also changes the emotional tone of a conversation. When leaders become genuinely curious, they are less likely to rely on advice, criticism, blame, or defensiveness. The discussion becomes a shared investigation rather than a courtroom drama. That improves trust, increases the flow of useful information, and makes commitment more likely.
Culture Changes One Question at a Time
Culture change may begin at the top, but it succeeds—or quietly wanders off—through everyday leadership. Senior leaders must model the desired vision, values, and behaviors. Leaders throughout the organization must then help people interpret and apply them in real situations.
Culture is the sum of the small things people do each day, especially when no one is giving a speech about culture. Leaders who ask more and tell less create momentum in both formal conversations and informal interactions. They help others think, connect, choose, and commit.
Leadership is tricky, demanding, and occasionally fun. In fact, the more skills you have available, the more often “occasionally” becomes “regularly.” A coach-like leader does not abandon expertise or avoid clear direction. The leader simply knows that the fastest route to lasting change is not always another answer. Sometimes it is the question that helps someone discover the answer—and decide to act on it.
So, before giving your next piece of excellent advice, pause and ask: What question could help this person see it for themselves?
To your greater success and fulfillment,
Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT
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