Occasional pieces on coaching, leadership and the conversations that never make it onto an agenda.https://meenaljaiswal.comen-inhttps://meenaljaiswal.com/writing/the-questions-i-ask-instead-of-answeringhttps://meenaljaiswal.com/writing/the-questions-i-ask-instead-of-answeringFive questions I have come to rely on, and why each one hands the thinking back to the person who owns the problem.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT<p>About ten years ago I was sitting across from someone on my team who was describing a problem, and I was already three steps into designing the fix while she was still talking. Somewhere in the middle of it I stopped myself and asked which of the two things she actually wanted from me, the solution or the support. She thought about it for a moment and said support. The conversation that followed was considerably better than the one I had been preparing to have.</p> <p>That accident turned into a habit, and the habit turned into the most useful thing I do as a leader. What I have accumulated over twenty years of building analytics functions and running delivery is not really a stock of answers. It is a small set of questions that I return to, and each one exists because it hands the thinking back to the person who owns the problem.</p> <h2 id="do-you-want-me-to-solve-this-or-do-you-want-my-support">Do you want me to solve this, or do you want my support?</h2> <p>This is the one I ask first, and it is the one that changes the shape of everything after it.</p> <p>There are moments when solving is the right answer. Systems go down, deadlines move, escalations land at eleven at night and somebody has to make a call. Nobody in that situation wants to be coached and it would be counter productive to try, not when we are in a warzone. They want a decision from the person who is accountable for making it, which is me.</p> <p>The problem is that the instinct to solve does not know when to switch itself off. It fires just as readily when the person in front of me is perfectly capable of working something out for themselves, and when it fires at the wrong moment it takes something from them. They walk in carrying a problem they could have solved and they walk out carrying my solution instead, which really is unfair to them.</p> <p>Asking removes the guesswork. Most of the time people know which one they need, and they are relieved to be given the choice rather than having it made for them.</p> <h2 id="what-have-you-already-tried">What have you already tried?</h2> <p>I used to skip this question because it felt like a formality. It is not a formality. It is the fastest way to find out that the person has already thought about the problem more carefully than I have, which is true far more often than my instincts suggest.</p> <p>There is a second thing it does. When someone lists what they have attempted, they usually hear a pattern in their own answer before I do. The question is not gathering information for me. It is holding a mirror up so they can see the work they have already done and recognise how close they are.</p> <h2 id="what-would-you-do-if-i-were-not-in-the-room">What would you do if I were not in the room?</h2> <p>This is the question that has surprised me most in how well it works.</p> <p>People almost always have an answer to it. They produce a clear, sensible course of action within about fifteen seconds, and then they look faintly embarrassed, as though they did not realise they had a view. What they were looking for was not direction. It was the reassurance that comes from saying a thing out loud to someone whose judgement they trust.</p> <p>When I answer that question for them I confirm a belief they should not be carrying, which is that the decision was never really theirs. When I let them answer it, they leave holding a decision they made themselves and they know they made it.</p> <h2 id="what-does-a-good-outcome-look-like-to-you">What does a good outcome look like to you?</h2> <p>A great deal of disagreement in delivery work is not disagreement about the path. It is two people optimising for different destinations without ever having said so.</p> <p>Asking this early saves weeks. It also does something more interesting, because people are often more ambitious in their answer than I would have been on their behalf. Left to define the outcome myself I tend to define it conservatively, sized to what I think the person can carry. Left to define it themselves they aim higher, and then they go and build the thing they described.</p> <h2 id="what-do-you-need-from-me-to-make-this-call-yourself">What do you need from me to make this call yourself?</h2> <p>I like this one because it keeps me useful without letting me take over.</p> <p>The answers are usually modest. Air cover with a stakeholder. Support on a decision made two quarters ago that nobody wrote down. A change budget number. Sometimes simply the confirmation that they are allowed to decide, which costs me nothing and changes how they move for the rest of the week.</p> <p>Very rarely is the answer the actual solution. I spent years assuming it would be.</p> <h2 id="what-the-questions-are-actually-doing">What the questions are actually doing</h2> <p>There are situations where a leader solves the problem outright, and those situations are real. But most situations are not those. Most of the time the person in front of you is more resourceful than the moment is allowing them to feel, and the work is to help them find that rather than to demonstrate that you can find it faster. The questions are how you do it.</p> <p>It does not come naturally and it is difficult. Anyone who has spent years being rewarded for having the answer has built a reflex that fires whether or not the moment calls for it. It takes practice not to rush in, not to solve the problem and instead to leave room for the person in front of you to do it themselves. And it matters because a person who solves something once on their own will solve the next three without you in the room.</p>coachingleadership