58 - Questions are the Answer with Hal Gregersen

Nordic Leaders

You’ve probably heard of Hal Gregersen… A global name in leadership and academia.

An author and senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at MIT's Sloan School of Management, a former executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, and ranked in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021.

His latest book, Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life is based on 200+ interviews with catalytic questioners such as Elon Musk and Orit Gadiesh.

Hal begins by talking about his lifelong passion of photography and a significant moment of failure with the camera.

Hal knows about questions! And in this episode we find out what are the most important questions in our lives and how to create a culture of fearless inquiry, including:

1. The power of Inquisitive Creativity
2. Fearless Questions and Hal’s work with the no 1 ranked Thinkers 50 Amy Edmondson, pioneer and champion of psychological safety
3. The Question Burst Process – a game-changing tool to help us tackle our own most challenging projects and dilemmas.
4. What questions give you energy what questions take it away, key stone and shadow questions
5. Many leaders are only asking, ‘What do we do?’ ‘How do we do it?’ They might be missing something
6. ‘Call-to-Action' questions and the power of 'What if' questions.

Hal gets us thinking about our relationship with questions, for example the role of authority figures in our childhood (at home, school, first job) and how they responded to our tough, challenging questions, and how that shapes us; right through to how we use questions in the workplace.

We hope you enjoy this warm and engaging conversation as much as we did: please consider smiling, following us, and perhaps a 5 star rating! 🙂