Home featured Featured Leadership Advice Small Business Featured The four questions good leaders need to ask their people Guest Author May 12, 2014 You don’t want the last question you ask a valued team member to be “Why are you leaving?” There is so much pressure on senior leaders to get results. This can lead to a culture that is very future focused. Managers are so busy forecasting for the future they don’t take stock of the here and now. What’s actually going on day to day for your staff has a direct impact on where your organisation is heading. Many managers misinterpret the need to check in with staff as simply remembering to stop and say: ‘Hi, how are you?’ a few times a week. General questions get generic responses and staff won’t feel comfortable responding to such an open question in an honest way. At the other extreme, questions that are purely performance based (eg: how are you going with your KPIs ?) can further alienate staff. We all have good days and bad days at work. We have times we know we’re firing on all cylinders and other moments where it’s hard just to keep your head above water. As a manager or leader, if you start to have more awareness of where people are at in these natural cycles, you can plan more effectively. Viewing the issue of ‘question asking’ as an exercise in mindfulness is useful, as it relieves the pressure for you to ‘fix