Here’s a familiar leadership puzzle: You implement new collaboration tools, restructure teams and launch performance improvement programmes. Six months later, the same challenges resurface. Sound familiar?
Recently, when 135 small and medium enterprise (SME) leaders shared their biggest people-related challenges with us, an intriguing pattern emerged. Despite citing sophisticated-sounding issues like “cross-functional collaboration” (29 percent) and “team performance optimisation” (26 percent), barely any of them mentioned psychological safety or trust – the very foundations of collaboration and performance.
Delving into what drives this pattern reveals why so many well-intentioned solutions fail to create lasting change. More critically, it exposes a fundamental misunderstanding about the leader’s role: the assumption that leadership means having the answers – rather than asking the right questions.
The Covid-19 pandemic exemplified this. Leaders discussed fear, uncertainty and human resilience in boardrooms, where such topics would previously have seemed off limits. The urgency of the business’ survival provided cover for exploring psychological safety and mental health, examining team dynamics and addressing emotional well-being.
Yet, our survey revealed how quickly this legitimacy evaporates. Post-crisis, leaders reverted to identifying surface-level issues like “inefficient collaboration” and “accountability gaps”, with fewer than 1 percent mentioning the trust deficits and psychological safety issues that extensive research shows drive these very symptoms. More tellingly, they returned to their familiar role as solution-providers rather than question-askers.
The temptation to address visible symptoms rather than invisible causes is not just understandable but can feel necessary for survival. Part of this stems from a fundamental misconception about leadership itself. Most leaders have been conditioned to believe their primary value lies in having answers. The higher our position, the more others expect us to know what to do.
But this mindset carries hidden costs. In our survey, over 60 percent of SME leaders reported that people-related challenges have significant to critical impacts on business performance and financial results. Most tellingly, just under half cited decreased productivity, while around a third noted lower levels of ownership and accountability – outcomes that often signal deeper engagement and trust issues.
When leaders consistently address symptoms rather than root causes, they inadvertently create what organisational psychologists call “solution fatigue”. Teams experience repeated change initiatives that provide temporary relief but fail to create lasting improvement, leading to cynicism and resistance to future efforts. This can compound underlying problems, erode trust and undermine confidence in leadership.
Consider the difference between these two responses to a collaboration challenge:
Answer-first approach: “We need better communication tools and clearer processes for cross-functional projects.”
Question-first approach: “What makes it difficult for people to collaborate across departments? What fears or concerns prevent genuine engagement? What would need to change for people to truly want to work together?”
The first approach leads to tool implementations and process changes – superficial solutions that may provide temporary improvement. The second opens pathways to understanding the human dynamics that either enable or prevent collaboration.
Gregersen’s research demonstrates that breakthrough innovations rarely emerge from having the right answers; they come from asking better questions. In his work with hundreds of organisations, he found that “question bursts” – focused sessions where teams generate questions rather than solutions – consistently produce more creative and effective approaches to persistent challenges. This requires the willingness to sit with problems long enough to understand their true nature.
Start with personal vulnerability: Leaders who model intellectual humility empower others to explore uncertainty. This doesn’t mean appearing incompetent, but rather demonstrating that acknowledging what we don’t know is a sign of wisdom, not weakness. When a leader admits uncertainty about why turnover is increasing or expresses legitimate curiosity about team dynamics, it signals that exploration is valued over premature answers.
Institutionalise questioning sessions: Successful leaders designate time during team meetings for what we call “question-first conversations”. These might include quarterly reviews that examine not just what happened but why it happened, or leadership discussions about decision-making patterns and their underlying drivers. The key is approaching these as opportunities for genuine inquiry, not disguised solution-seeking.
Redefine leadership competence: Many leaders avoid asking questions because they fear appearing uninformed or indecisive. However, organisations that recognise questioning as a core leadership competency often find themselves spending far less time on repeated crisis management and change initiatives. One participant noted: “The hour we spend monthly exploring why things work the way they do saves us 10 hours of conflict resolution and rework.”
Leverage transition moments: Rather than waiting for crises, thoughtful leaders use natural transition points – be it new hires, role changes or strategy shifts – as opportunities to examine underlying dynamics. These moments already involve change, making deeper conversations feel more natural and necessary.
Also read: The three A's of responsible leadership
The most successful leaders develop what can be described as a “both/and” approach. They address immediate symptoms when necessary for business continuity, while simultaneously investing in understanding and addressing root causes through systematic questioning. This dual focus prevents crisis while building long-term organisational resilience.
This approach also requires leaders to create psychologically safe environments where people feel safe expressing uncertainty, challenging assumptions and exploring uncomfortable possibilities. When team members believe that asking difficult questions will be met with curiosity rather than defensiveness, the quality of organisational learning improves dramatically.
But this isn’t easy. Some leaders may unconsciously avoid questioning as acknowledging that problems might have deeper, more complex origins can feel like an admission of failure or incompetence. Exploring root causes through questioning also requires confronting uncertainty, which activates our psychological threat detection systems.
Yet, leaders who learn to tolerate this discomfort often find it liberating. They stop taking personal responsibility for having immediate answers and start building systems for understanding systemic causes to create sustainable change. They begin to see complexity not as failure but as reality – and how working with reality, rather than against it, is the path to effective solutions.
Leaders who embrace this approach don’t wait for the next crisis to create space for deeper exploration. They create that space themselves. As one experienced CEO in our survey reflected: “Crisis taught us that we could explore difficult questions about our business challenges and still deliver results. The real question is: Can we maintain that courage to not know immediately, and to ask better questions without needing external pressure to justify it?”
The organisations that thrive will be those led by people willing to probe what lies beneath, not just address what appears on the surface. The most successful teams dig deeper because their leaders have learned to value questions as much as – if not more than – answers.
First Published: Oct 01, 2025, 15:14
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