The Power of Leading With Questioning

In this post, we will try to demonstrate that good questions are at the basis of good leadership in Optometry. Once you have the right people in your practice, good practice management relies on asking the right questions. The right questions turn even an informal meeting into a debate. You don’t want your practice to be governed by the culture of lecturer-attendants type of meeting where staff listen to the practice manager or the optometrist and then resume their work or continue diner. Don’t expect your staff to be the ones asking you questions. Be proactive and engage them in questions that push the whole ambiance to creatively find solutions. Imagine you are a prosecutor who is supposed to ask and investigate in order to come with a solution and not an optometrist who is supposed to know the answers to all the questions related to the practice.

Why good questioning is related to good Leadership in Optometry?

Good questioning leads to the truth that is based on facts and not leadership charisma:

Good questions that prosecutors ask never end with a simple yes or no answer. Prosecutors never let go until every little detail is understood, every “what” but most importantly every “why”. Prosecutors master the art of hypothesis testing. Thus, questioning is used to gain understanding: the way Socrates did it. Socrates’ method is based on cooperative argumentative debates that promote critical thinking through asking and answering questions that draw out ideas underlined in presuppositions and presumptions. This method is employed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutor’s belief and help advance understanding the truth by eliminating contradicting hypotheses. Constantly rejecting hypotheses lead to finding a steady hypothesis. By following this method you motivate your staff to search for commonly held truth that makes beliefs and tests them to determine their consistency with other beliefs. Collectively you formulate a series of questions as logic tests and fact tests that are aimed at revealing the team’s beliefs about any topic and any circumstance.

Leading as an Optometrist or a practice manager does not rely on coming up with all the answers and then trying to motivate or convince your staff to follow your vision. Instead, it relies on being able to reveal the fact and the truth that is not enough understood to have a general answer and then come up with the right questions that lead to the best possible outcomes in any situation.